The Valkyrie Star: Book 4 Beginning and End
by jgames
Summary: Mysterious messages lead our group of heroes to the planet of Valkyria. There they embark on a journey that sends them across the entire planet looking for a mysterious maiden and battling vicious monsters. Please read and review.
1. Chapter 1  New Home

**Animaniacs and the Valkyrie Star**

**Book Four – Beginning and End**

Disclaimer:

Yakko:_ Hello all, the content in this fan fiction is strictly that, __fiction__! If you believe any of this stuff, you've probably been watching too much TV and need to at least get out of the house for some fresh air... however, if that actually be the case, you probably shouldn't be reading this anyway._

Wakko:_ You forgot to mention that the author of "The Valkyrie Star" series does not own any characters associated with Warner Brothers' Animaniacs nor owns the rights therein._

Dot:_ Do you have any idea what those words mean?_

Wakko:_ I got them from Yakko's dictionary._

Yakko:_ Good night everybody!_

**Chapter 1**** – New Home**

Its Rita again, we were asleep in our new home near Burbank, California. All was peaceful and quiet until Mira's alarm clock went off at around 8:30 am. She crawled out of bed, and went to brush her teeth and get herself ready to "babysit" the Warners again. Let me describe our new house first.

The front yard was approximately an entire acre by itself, (we told you she was loaded in book 3) a concrete pathway from the white fence 's gate, traveling in a straight line, going all the way to the front door, led the way to the house. The house itself was placed in the center of the acre of land with a 2 car garage attached to the left side of the house. Around the white colored house was a brick flower bed that ran along the entire sides of the house from front door to the back patio. The house was also around three stories tall, over 76 feet long and 59 feet wide. The walls were a solid white while the roof was kind of a beige color. A tall fence divided the land directly in half. The back yard was an entire sea of bright green grass with a 17 ½ foot long by 15 foot wide by 13 feet deep pool around 6 ½ feet away from the patio that spanned 6 feet long by 20 feet wide and was made of concrete. The rest of the front yard was also mostly grass with a couple of round trees about 6 feet tall, one on each side of the concrete walk way.

Through the white front door, was an elegant entry way. The wood floor was a bright oak color around 20 feet wide, 20 feet long, and another 2 stories tall. There was a gold and crystal chandelier in the center of the ceiling. The walls were a white sandy color all throughout the entire entryway and there were around four oak doors around the ground floor. Two doors on the left side of the entry way led into two guest bed rooms. Each bed room was decorated with light floral wall paper, velvet colored window curtains, and queen sized beds with velvet and purple bed sheets with around 5 velvet colored pillows. The first two were side by side darker purple. The next two were just in front of that layer, they were a lighter velvet color, and then there was a deep purple square pillow that sat alone in the very front. The other furniture in the room was made of mahogany wood.

At the far side of the entry way was another swinging door that led to the kitchen area. The floor changed from oak flooring, to sandy large tile flooring. Near the far right side was an island kitchen, the counter top preparation area, where Mira prepared all of our meals, and the cabinets were all made from oak wood, alongside the cabinets stood a range stove, a large two door refrigerator, and oak drawers for organization of cooking and eating utensils. Farther away from the preparation area stood a slightly darker colored dinner table with six elegant chairs surrounding it.

On the right side of the entry way, closest to the front door was another door that led to a living room. Inside the living room was a large 72 inch plasma screen TV complete with cable, a large custom couch that is capable of seating 5 grown men and a fireplace over along the right wall.

Along the right wall ran a staircase that moved all the way up to the third floor, where five more bedrooms decorated just like the guest rooms, the master bedroom where the decorations were similar, but more elegant, (and with a king sized bed) as well as two full bathrooms including the master bedroom's elegant oversized bathroom.

Runt likes to run around in the back yard while I prefer to relax on the patio. Ace, however prefers to hop, jump and play around. That is, until the Warners come over to visit. You never know which of their entrances they'll use when showing up. Such as today, Mira groggily staggered down stairs to the kitchen, in order to make herself some breakfast. When she got there she reached into the refrigerator to grab the milk, fumbled in one of the drawers and found a spoon, reached in one of the cupboards for some cereal, and grabbed a bowl from another one. Just as she was eating her cereal, the Warners quickly rose out of a nearby cookie jar and said, "Helooooo nurse!" startling Mira somewhat.

One by one they jumped down from the cookie jar and landed softly and silently on the tile floor. "So, whatcha got for us today?" Wakko asked with excitement in his voice. "You always take us on the best trips." Dot added sharing her brother's excitement. Yakko, however headed straight for the living room to watch TV. "Yakko..." Mira called. Yakko stopped in his tracks and turned back to Mira with a sheepish look on his face. "Yes?" he retorted. "Eat first, bathe second, field trip third, no TV today." Yakko looking slightly disappointed turned back to sit himself in one of the dinner table's chairs. Dot began to laugh and pointed at Yakko, "Ha, ha, you got caught." She said. "Dot, now isn't the time to tease your brother." Mira retorted.

The Warners quickly learned to behave around Mira. They've seen her more than once get mean and counter half of their gags. Like last week, when Wakko ate her refrigerator, literally. She tracked him down and poured iodine down his throat. He walked around slightly drunk and feeling sick for around 6 hours. Dot got a kick out of that. She allowed some zaniness at times. After all, she knew who the Warners were at heart. However, she also knew the limits of her own acceptance. After Mira had finished her cereal, she walked over to the stove and made her "famous" scrambled eggs with mushrooms and jalapeño skins, and the Warners ate happily.

After they all got cleaned up, one at a time, they met back down stairs, near the front door. Mira had the Warners line up side by side to check and see if they were properly packed for their field trip. Each Warner had a backpack of supplies, a first aid kit, a packed lunch, and study books (in case Mira decides to quiz them on some of the animals). She started with Yakko, passing her inspection she then moved to Wakko, who also passed her inspection. When she moved on to Dot, however something was a bit off. Instead of her usual hair style, dot had a curly poof of hair, "Very funny Dot." Mira said noticing that it was merely a wig. Dot gave Mira a large goofy grin and Mira chuckled slightly. Then Dot reached up and plucked her wig off of her head and hid it in the hammerspace behind her back. Mira finished chuckling and said to the Warners, "Do you guys know where we are going today?" All three of them rose their hands, "The beach", guessed Yakko, "The mall" guessed Dot, "Don Notts' summer home" guessed Wakko. Yakko, Dot and Mira simply glared at the small boy as if he was cracked in the head. "The Zoo" Mira finally answered after letting that random bit of comedy die down. The Warners cheered at the realization of their destination.


	2. Chapter 2  The Zoo

**Chapter 2**** – The Zoo**

Mira brought them to her new Cevy Taho and the Warner's began to run around the vehicle trying to get Mira to chase them, which she did for a while then she opened one of the doors and they piled inside and Mira shut the door. Mira ran around to the other side of the SUV only to notice that the door was locked and the Warner's were grinning out the window at her. Mira smiled back and dangled the keys in front of them. She had a remote starter and keyless entry so she wasn't worried too much. She easily unlocked the door and climbed into the driver's seat. "Wakko," she said peering back toward the siblings. They were seated as usual, Wakko seated near the right window, Dot in the middle, and Yakko on the left. Wakko turned to look at the lady to hear what she had to say to him. "Switch places with Dot. I'm not having another sibling rivalry in the car." "Oh, kay." He responded. Dot and Wakko switched places, however that didn't stop the bickering.

Half way there, Dot and Yakko began arguing again, "Why are you reaching over to my side?" Dot would ask her brother. "I needed to get something." He would respond then pull his hand back with nothing in tow. "Yah, right Yakko, you're trying to pick fights again." Dot would retort. "No, I'm not." He would say with a slight whine. "Yes you are!" Dot accused. "Am not!" Yakko retorted. The back-and-forth continued for some time with poor Wakko in the center of the whole thing. When things began to get hairy, Wakko started bursting out into tears, crying up a storm. Yakko and Dot, realizing that they had upset there brother, began to calm him down. When Wakko at last stopped crying, Yakko and Dot simply apologized to each other and sat still. Mira then fumbled with something up front, reached back and handed Wakko a chocolate chip cookie. "Great job Wakko." She said to him, looking at him in the rear-view-mirror. Wakko just grinned and happily ate his prize. Yakko and Dot, realizing they had been duped, looked at each other, dumbfounded.

They arrived at the zoo parking lot and boy was it a nightmare to find a place to actually park the vehicle. But, once Mira found a place to park, the Warner's all piled out of the car cheering and running about. Mira followed the excited children through the front gate and paid for their tickets. The four of them went in and began to look at all of the animals with amazement and excitement. Lions, tigers, bears, sloths, orangutans, chimpanzees, Galapagos tortoises, etc. They went and saw every animal there was in the zoo. Dot especially enjoyed the aquarium, with the dolphins and the exotic fish.

When lunch time rolled around, Mira went to go buy the Warner's some ice cream bars at one of the snack vendors. Suddenly, her phone rings signaling that she had received a text message. When she flipped open her phone, the message read, "A journey awaits your return to home. Six shall move along the path that's shown. Worlds apart as space will bend. Wait for them till their journey's end." This was the fifth message Mira had received this week and it all began with that mysterious e-mail. She put her phone away and continued on to purchasing the ice cream for the Warner's.

She returned to the Warners to present them with their treats, she gave Yakko a toffee crunch bar, Wakko a Drumstick with chocolate in the center, and Dot a strawberry Popsicle. Mira sat down and gave the Warners their treats and decided to tell them, "Hey guys, I just got another one of those cryptic anonymous messages." "Phaboo!" Wakko responded. "You've been getting those for days now. What does that make it, eight messages so far?" Yakko retorted. "My question is; what do they mean?" Mira asked. She then flipped open her cell phone and brought the message back up to show the kids. After reading the message they all stopped to think on it a while. Then Mira suggested, "Let's think on this when we get back. That'll be tonight's homework." "Aw!" the three of them whined. "Hey", Mira retorted, "I haven't given you guys any homework at all this week. This isn't gonna kill you." When she turned to the Warners, there they were lying in coffins and dressed for the funeral. "Ok, if you guys are gonna be that way, you don't need any of my hand made ice cream tonight." The Warners jumped out of the coffins and started to apologize and explain that it was only a joke. Mira chuckled slightly and said, "Oh, alright. Let's get back to my house and review those messages."

The trip back was pretty uneventful, Yakko and Dot stayed quit, not wanting to get themselves fooled by Mira and Wakko again, and Wakko just sat in the center smiling happily the whole way back. When Mira finally pulled into her driveway and pushed the button to make the garage door automatically rise, they discovered an incredible phenomenon inside. There was a brilliant light blue light shining in the dead center of the garage, the center seemed like a small sphere with faded tails prejudging off of it and spiraling around making the whole thing resemble an oval shape. From the light there were several noises most of which sounded like metal being waved to simulate the sound of thunder. As they peered through, the image of grassy hills and a clear stream could be seen inside the oval shape. "Uuuuuuuuh, I think our homework just did itself." Yakko announced. Mira just gave Yakko a dirty look from the corner of her left eye. "Dot, go find Runt and the cats." Mira said with slight fear in her voice.

Dot did as she was told and came out with us and we all looked on in astonishment at the strange phenomenon. Then all of a sudden, they all began to hear a part from the song, "Numa Numa" emanating from Yakko's trouser pocket. Every one stood there and stared at him. "What? It's funny!" he retorted. Then the chorus from "Bad Day" could be heard from a side pocket in Wakko's back pack. Wakko stood there seemingly slightly nervous and with small beads of sweat coming from his brow. "Wakko, I think that's coming from you." Dot pointed out. Wakko lowered his head into the collar of his shirt and simply blushed. Lastly, the sound of the song "Macadamia Nut" could be heard coming from Dot's back pack. It was her brothers' turn to stare at Dot this time. "Oh, don't give me that look. It was my best bit!" she snapped. (Recap: Mira bought the Warner siblings each a cell phone to use in case of emergencies. She also gave them strict rules and guidelines to follow while granted access to those cell phones, along with steep consequences should those rules be broken.) Each ring tone signified that each had received a text message of some sort. "Walk through the light and enter a world unfamiliar and wonderful."

All three of them were now utterly confused. That is, until Ace stiffened up suddenly and sprinted toward the eerie light. "Ace?" I called out as he broke out into a mad dash for the...what-ever-it-was. When he got close enough, he sprang up as high as he could and jumped through the center of the light. As his flesh came into contact with the light, bolts of electricity erupted from where Ace had connected and rather than moving through it, he had entered into it and landed on the grass inside. "Ace you get back here right now young man!" I hollered at him while running to follow him. Before I knew it Runt had bolted past me and ran, head first, in through the strange light alongside Ace. In awe and shock, I stared at their images for a short time. Shaking off my shock, I said to myself, "If ya can't beat em, join em", then ran for the light myself.

When my body made contact with the strange light, I could feel a strange tingling feeling wash over me, filling my body from my nose to the tip of my tail. When the feeling faded away, I opened my eyes to find myself in a wide meadow. Green grass as far as the eye could see, small wild flowers scattered everywhere simply asking to be smelled. The sky was a brilliant light blue and the clouds never looked so white ever before. A feeling of calm and tranquility overcame me and I couldn't help but to feel the urge to take a cat nap right where I stood.

The Warners just saw us plunge through a mysterious hole in space and time, without so much as blinking. So, they all three immediately jumped in at the same time and with that, they nearly all landed right on top of me. When we all looked back, the light had disappeared, and Mira was nowhere in sight. We all just stared at the place where the light used to be, "Did any of you know that would happen?" Yakko asked his siblings. Both of them shook their heads in shock. "We are gonna be in **so** much trouble." Dot exclaimed. Suddenly, all of their cell phones rang at the same time again. As they flipped open their phones, they noticed that they all had the same message again. "Travel ye, to the silver palace. And seek ye the maiden's chalice. To find a fate so foretold and written, seek guidance and council from the Valkyrie, hidden."


	3. Chapter 3  Unknown Terrain

**Chapter 3**** – Unknown Terrain**

"Uhhhhhhhhh, does anyone know where we are?" Yakko asked. "The better question is, how did we receive text messages with no signal?" Dot added. Yakko and Wakko looked at the screen on their phones again and noticed that there truly was no signal. "Perhaps we had a signal when we received the messages." Wakko deduced, suddenly his cell phone rang again and, looking again he **didn't** have a signal even when he received that message. His new message read, "Guess again." Wakko looked up from his phone and said, "Now I'm even more confused than before." "That didn't take much." Yakko retorted. Wakko's phone rang again and this time when he checked the message, it was a map that looked like it was drawn by a three-year-old. The map had a clear path and some crappy sketches of a few obstacles and land marks. "Hey look guys this map is pretty good!" Wakko said to his siblings while showing off his new message. "Whoa, dumber than advertised!" Dot said under her breath.

"Well, I guess whoever led us here wants us to head toward this castle." Yakko said. "Now if we could just read the map properly." Dot retorted. Suddenly, from behind us, we heard deep breathing as if something **big **was standing there. We all turned around to see a large tiger-like creature. As large as a bear, shaped basically like a tiger (stripes included), also it had a lions mane that was also decorated with tiger stripes. It reared back and let out a huge roar that sounded like a cross between both a lion's roar and a tiger's roar. Dot snagged the left side of its lip and said to it, "We're trying to figure something out. Could you hold that..." rather than allowing Dot to finish her gag, the "tiger-lion" made a quick attempt to literally bite her hand off.

Yakko snatched his sister away before Dot was less one hand and told her, "I don't think our gags are going to work on something like this." "Suggestions?" I asked with panic in my voice. "Uuuuuuuuuh, **RUN**!" Yakko yelled. Our group then turned away and ran as fast as we all could. Apparently, Ace had even snapped out of his trance at the creature's roar and began to run alongside Runt and I. "Where are we going, mom?" Ace turned to me and asked. "Ace, we are being chased by a large cat-like thing. Think about it." I responded. Ace looked back at the creature and said, "Away from that, right." "Yah, and you don't suppose you could somehow, oh-I-don't-know, **slow it down**?" I began to panic. The giant creature was closing in and getting ready to feast on us, until Ace deliberately entered his sage mode, the silvery blue light emanating off of his body. The large creature skidded to a halt, knelt down and slowly backed away as if it was bowing to Ace. When it got far enough away, it turned and simply walked away. Ace, slightly confused, exited sage mode, his light slowly fading away. We all were actually confused at what just happened. Ace cocked his head to his right side trying to make attempts to figure it out. Suddenly, he closed his eyes as if he was in slight pain, and walked up to me. "Mom, I think I overcooked my brain." He said to me. I just looked at him with a slight frustrated look and said, "The most powerful creature on the face of Earth and you can't even think for very long without hurting yourself? You have been hanging with the Warner brothers for too long." Suddenly, Dot blurted out, "And the Warner sister" to complete the phrase. Ace simply perked his head up and gave me that goofy grin.

"Hey guys, I think we might wanna get moving before that thing comes back with 'friends'." Yakko said sarcastically. "What about your 'pet' Dot?" Wakko asked. Dot reached into her back pack and pulled out a small box about the size of her hand. "You mean this?" she said as she slowly removed the lid. Normally a random creature of evil incarnate would jump out, scare people and jump back into the box. However, this time there was nothing. The scene went so quiet you could hear strange shaped bugs that looked like a cross between a cricket and a spider chirping away. Puzzled, Dot looked inside the little box. "Uh, oh!" she then exclaimed, "I think it got loose." "I don't wanna see what that thing decides to turn into when it returns. Let's go!" Yakko stated with a tinge of fear in his voice. The six of us continued on to what we thought to be the direction the "map" was taking us. We had to stop several times to search for the land marks depicted on it.

We had a long walk ahead of us, apparently whoever brought us to this world, failed to mention anything of mixed creatures and strange phenomenon. We barely knew why we were here in the first place. So many questions ran through my mind. Why were we here? Who called us to this strange world? Where are we? So many questions that my head was spinning. I looked over and Runt was carrying little Ace on his back. It wasn't long until we reached our first land mark. It resembled the Roman Coliseum and at the same time somehow resembled a school.

As we walked inside to investigate, I was awestruck at some of the decorations inside. The building itself was designed like a ring cut into multiple segments. Each segment was almost 200 feet in length from the outer wall to the inner wall. What seemed to be a library was located to the immediate right of the entry way the library, which spanned around 300 feet long and had a wall divide it from the next room which happened to be rows of classrooms, each around 50 feet from wall to wall, and each having doors connecting one to the other. On the right side of the entry way was located another library about the same length with a similar wall dividing it from the mess hall (or the cafeteria). It was hard to tell what was beyond that point, however, the center of the building resembled the battle arena of the Roman Coliseum and (to my guess) was actually what it was used for.

As we were looking around this amazing structure, none of us notice Wakko sneaking off toward the cafeteria in hopes of finding a "magic refrigerator" or something. He continued through the right side library and into the mess hall. There He saw rows of wooden tables and benches like you would see in a medieval movie, and in an area toward the outer wall of the building there was a serving area, also resembling something from medieval times. Wakko went through the cupboards the storage areas and everywhere he could think of to find food, and found nothing. Slightly disappointed he placed his hand on his stomach and listened to it growl. He decided to look inside his backpack for sustenance and still found nothing. Apparently he had eaten his entire lunch at the zoo. Unable to stand the frustration any longer, Wakko screamed out loud.

The rest of us heard his frustrated cry and ran to see what was wrong. "Wakko, what's the matter?" Yakko asked his brother with worry in his voice. "We have no food! And I'm hungry! What are we gonna do?" Wakko whined. "Uh, oh. No food is bad. Definitely, definitely a bad thing." Runt agreed. My stomach was beginning to growl now too. We had no idea how long we had been here. However, one by one our stomachs began growling. It was pretty apparent that we were all hungry. Wakko suddenly began to cry and blurted out at the top of his lungs, "I WANT THE MAGIC REFRIGERATOR!" Suddenly, Yakko got an idea, "Wakko, do you still have that 1960's fridge in your gag-bag?" Wakko stopped crying long enough to nod at Yakko's question. "But...but it's still empty..." he then added. "Not for long." Yakko stated. "Dot, Ace, search the libraries for anything we can use to make the magic fridge." Ace didn't say anything, but simply saluted Yakko and dashed off to search the shelves for a spell book. "Now I know how you feel half of the time." Yakko solemnly said to me. Dot took off to the library that Ace wasn't at to help speed up the search.

An hour later, our stomachs were beginning to roar rather than growl. I was curled up in a ball trying to sleep off my hunger (with no luck at all), Yakko burned up his spare time playing with his little paddle ball toys (He had even gotten the hang of using his feet to play), and Wakko at one point tried to eat one of the rotten benches at one of the tables, but it splintered all over his tongue. It was quite amusing, he took a huge bite of the bench, chewed on it for a bit, made that silly face he makes when he had eaten something really awful, spat out the remains of the bench he had chewed on, and stuck his tongue out to reveal that it looked quite like a red cactus with wooden needles. So he spent the rest of his time painfully plucking the splinters from his tongue. Runt was running around sniffing everything he was capable of seeing.

Suddenly, Dot's voice could be heard echoing from a good distance away, "I found it! I found it!" We all looked off in the distance Dot was coming from. Apparently the appropriate book for the specific enchantment was lost somewhere in one of the classrooms, until Dot poked around and located it. It was an exact replica of the large red book from the magic space, which was destroyed upon its collapse. The two of them searched the book and eventually found the spell that created the magic refrigerator. It was called "Food from thought enchantment" or in the language of this world, "Ken sano dun thresta". (Don't ask) Two and a half hours went by before Ace finally learned how to cast the spell properly. During that time, Dot had located some sort of magazine from this world and began to read it. I, being unable to even read the **title**, asked, "Whatcha reading?" "It's called 'Creations Lately'. It's like the Cosmopolitan magazine back home." Dot responded. "What's the main article?" I asked. "Household spells made easy." She quoted. "Did everything on this world use magic for everyday needs?" I asked myself, out loud. "Pretty much." Dot responded. "That was rhetorical." I said slightly frustrated. Ace finally walked up to Wakko and they completed Yakko's idea. Wakko reached into his gag-bag and pulled out an ugly cream colored 1960's fridge complete with lead lining...no idea why Wakko never updated the contents of his gag-bag. Ace then stood in front of the hideous fridge and cast a different spell before he began, transforming it into a 1980's fridge. "Why you never decided to update and repair this thing I'll never know." Ace then said to Wakko sarcastically. Wakko simply shrunk his head into the collar of his shirt. Ace then cast the "food from thought" spell and that was that. No flashing light, no fantastic spectacle, nothing. Just words and a soft clicking sound. Yakko then walked up to the fridge and opened it, inside there was the fixings for deli sandwiches. "Now if I can get you to make the magic TV..." before Yakko could finish his sentence, Dot cleared her throat and gave her brother the dirtiest of dirty looks. Yakko simply shut his mouth and bashfully smiled.


	4. Chapter 4  The Arena

**Chapter 4**** – The Arena**

It was during our light meal that we heard a strange noise. It was a loud pounding noise that sounded like a large creature beating against an enormous metal door. Yakko and I slowly rose to our feet and made our way toward the origin of the noise. Louder and louder it got as we moved closer toward the center of the building. We finally reached the inner wall and it seemed like there was more to the building than that. The loud noise still could be heard from the other side of the wall still. So, Yakko and I slowly moved back to the rest of the group and when, the actual back wall began to thump loudly, almost as if something was on the other side. We looked back only to watch the wall begin to crack from near the top all the way down to the floor. We backed up as quickly as we could as the cracks began to widen and spread. We were just about to reach the rest of the group just as the wall burst in toward us. Large chunks of stone and concrete came flying at us all and landing mere inches away from us, bouncing away and nearly disintegrating upon impact, some breaking many smaller pieces that still could hurt us pretty badly if they did hit. During the whole scenario, Wakko grabbed his new, magic fridge and put it back into his gag-bag to make sure it wasn't destroyed.

During all of the commotion, there came a loud, high-pitched roar from the dust cloud left behind by the wall's destruction. After the dust settled down a little while, a dark silhouette could be seen in the clouds. When the dust settled enough to actually see what had destroyed the wall, we were astonished to see a black European dragon. Its head was that of a boa constrictor's and had sharp horns producing out from just behind its yellow snake-like eyes. It also had a long neck spanning around 8 ½ feet long and had razor sharp spikes running along the vertebra of its spine. Its body nearly resembled that of a black Labrador dog, except the lizard-like feet, and also had spikes following the spine. Despite popular belief, this dragon had no wings, however was strong enough to break through the stone wall. Its tail spanned around nearly 9 or 10 feet and had spikes running down it until approximately 4 inches from the tail tip.

The moment it saw us, it roared again, rearing its head back. When it stopped, it started inhaling, making a kind of hissing noise like us cats. Inside its mouth, it began to light up as if the inside of his throat had flames inside. That's because, it did! The moment it exhaled, a spray of flames leaped from its mouth at us. Ace quickly leaped in front of us and called out for a barrier spell. A dome of energy surrounded us and the flames struck the barrier, bouncing off of it. Despite not being burned to cinders, I could still feel the intense heat piercing through the shield nearly scalding my fur. "What's going on? Where did this thing come from?" Dot screamed. Ace, still concentrating on keeping up the barrier responded, "It must have smelled the deli meat and came to claim it for its own." Placing all of the power he could into his current spell, the barrier expanded to nearly the size of the room, smashing into the dragon and pushing it back outside from where it came. The creature toppled onto its back and rolled toward its left to quickly get back onto its feet.

Ace then activated his sage mode, hoping that it would simply go away like that tiger-lion-thing. Unfortunately, the dragon wasn't impressed with all that glowing. Instead, it seemed to enrage it even more. The dragon once again reared back and threw flames from its mouth at the small kitten. Ace once again put up the shield to protect us and the heat penetrated through so we all could feel it. We would die of heat stroke before we even found out how to get back home. The dragon didn't seem like he was going to stop throwing fire at us until it was sure we were dead either. Ace suddenly used the teleportation spell on us to get us all back outside of the building. However, we appeared in the center of the building's arena instead.

The center had no roof and was about as wide as the Autzen Stadium that the Oregon Ducks football team plays in, and (other than the unkempt grass and lack of chalk lines) it kind of resembled it as well. The side walls spanned up to the tallest ceiling inside the building, and then the bleachers rose up another 5 stories. The dragon looked for us for a while until he simply stopped and sniffed at the air. It turned around to look in our direction and roared just before it decided to charge at us once again.

"Ace," I said, "Do you think you can stop that thing?" Ace turned to me and looked at me with his eyes glowing with that diamond blue light and nodded. Then, placing a shield around his body, he levitated about a foot off of the ground and darted straight for the black lizard at high speeds. The dragon lowered its head to begin to defend itself and the two smashed into each other like two rams fighting over a female, applying all of the force that they could against each other to overpower one another like in a game of arm wrestling.

Ace and the dragon seemed to be perfectly matched and equal in strength until Ace burst into that diamond blue aura and pushed the creature back through the hole it made when it broke through the wall. There was a large cracking noise and a cloud of dust escaping from the hole and settling on the ground. After a short while of suspense, Ace emerged from the dust cloud floating in the air and slightly bruised, but alright for the most case. He wearily gave me a reassuring smile and all of my worries simply washed away until the dragon came back from beyond the dust cloud and, in one snap, swallowed ace whole. My heart sank into its own shadowy depths of despair as I witnessed him disappear from view as the dragon's mouth snapped shut.

The vicious creature glared at the rest of our group hungrily and wanting a taste of the rest of its meal. All five of us were frozen with fear as the dragon moved in closer and closer to us ready to devour us one by one, until there was a small rumbling in its stomach. Suddenly it reared back as if it was in dire pain. It began to thrash around in searing agony, roaring and screeching at the top of its lungs. Dot then noticed something happening at the dragon's feet. Apparently, they were beginning to freeze up. The freezing continued on up the dragon's legs and crawled along his body until it was completely encased in ice, unable to move. Slightly relieved and confused, no one could explain what had just happened until a small rumbling began to occur from inside the dragon ice sculpture. The rumbling grew louder and louder until the whole frozen creature began to shake violently. Suddenly, the frozen dragon burst like a crystal statue striking the ground from being dropped from the hands of a human, and in its place was Ace alive and well, floating in mid air and slowly lowering himself to the ground.

Overwhelmed with joy, I bounded over to him to make sure that he was, indeed, alright. When I got there, he was breathing heavily and barely awake. "Sorry if I scared you mom. I didn't mean to." With tears of joy rolling down my cheeks, I said to him, "Don't worry about it kiddo, just rest for now." With that Ace closed his eyes and his breathing eased as he fell asleep.

Dot then walked up to me, placing her hand gently on my back and said, "I'll carry him in my back pack." Reluctantly, I nodded and agreed as long as I traveled with him. Dot then placed both Ace and I inside her half-zipped pink back pack and we all solemnly continued our journey.


	5. Chapter 5  Exhaustion

**Chapter 5**** – Exhaustion**

The first thing we did was have Yakko climb up to the top of the coliseum to get a good view of the landscape. He took Wakko's cell phone to compare the map and find out where to go from here. Fumbling with the buttons of the unfamiliar device he mumbled to himself, "How do you find the text messages on this..." when he finally pulled up the map, he was relieved, still annoyed, but relieved. "There you are." He said as if the crappy map drawn on the screen of Wakko's phone could talk back to him. "Oh, Kay!" He sighed as he turned his head to identify the various landmarks. "If that's over there, then we should head this way to... But what if this is that thing? Then we go this way... This map sucks." He said to himself. He took some time to study the map a little more and identify more landmarks in order to find our way.

After an hour of studying and being frustrated at the inability to translate no-talent, he finally gave up and said, "We are **so **lost!" Suddenly, off in the distance, he thought he spotted something moving closer to their location. Yakko placed his right hand above his eyes to shield them from the evening sun and to try to get a better look at what he thought was approaching them. He was soon able to confirm that there was **indeed** something closing in on their location. However, he had no idea what it was. And it was too far to see clearly. He guessed that it would take approximately all night to actually reach them and so wasn't particularly worried. He made his way down from his roost to join his siblings for a meal.

When he had gotten to the rest of the group, he found that they had worked on fixing up the fire stoves and Dot was cooking something in a large pot over it. (Ace used his magic to light the fire) "So, what did you find out?" Wakko asked. "Not much, whoever sent you that map needs art lessons badly." He said. "No, I mean about where we need to go." Wakko reminded his brother. "Oh, I think we need to head northwest for a few days." Yakko responded then took a sniff at the air. The wonderful aroma of beef stew ran across his nose and danced in his head for a time, and his stomach began to growl, telling him that it was empty. "Ho, man that smells good." Yakko said as he began to drool. "You're sure that this won't attract any more dragons?" "If it does, we can always show it what happened to its cousin over there." Yakko retorted, pointing over to the pile of thawing out hunks of dragon flesh outside.

The good news was that it didn't attract any more dragons; the bad news was that it attracted some sort of strange bee-type creature that kind of looked like miniature praying mantises. It was getting quite annoying until Wakko pulled out an awning with bug nets from his gag-bag. "I don't remember you ever having that before." Dot stated. "I put it in last summer, when we got swarmed during that barbecue." Wakko answered his sister. Dot then pictured that even in her head. It was in the middle of August and Dr. Scratchansniff planned a barbecue in a nearby lot. The Warners had attended (uninvited) and nearly destroyed everything. Wakko pigged out on the spare ribs until a swarm of wasps decided to attack him and make a meal out of the barbecue sauce that covered nearly 40% of his body including 60% of his face. "Good idea." She urged after envisioning the event and chuckling slightly. "That was not funny! I hurt for weeks!" Wakko retorted. "Ok, ok. Let's eat and get some sleep. It's getting late." I interrupted.

Night fell, and boy was it a cold one. It felt like the temperature had dropped into the teens once the sun had fully set. Wakko had pulled out a couple of sleeping bags out of his gag-bag. The three Warners putting two of them together to create a larger bed and Runt, Ace and I snuggled up in the third. The strange bugs had also gone away seeking shelter from the cold air. 3 hours into our sleep, I was awoken b y a strange noise that sounded similar to rocks being rolled down off of a ledge and down a slope. I scooted toward the opening of the sleeping bag to get a better look at our stalker. I didn't see anything in all of the shadows, and the sound had stopped. I stayed alert for a while and couldn't see anything so I fell back to sleep.

Dawn came and the sun arose into the sky from beneath the horizon, its light startling us all awake. Yakko groaned and turned to shield himself from the sun, Wakko yawned deeply and tried to sit up but plopped back down, Dot almost immediately sat up and stretched to get any kinks out of her neck, back and shoulders. I woke up first from our group. I scooted out of the sleeping bag's opening and stretched my front legs. Then I stretched my back legs one at a time as Ace woke up and crawled out of the sleeping bag and stretched the same way I did. Runt, however was still fast asleep and probably would stay that way for another 24 hours. The Warner brothers slowly arose after their sister shook them awake. As for Runt, over time, I've learned a quick and easy method to awaken him with no worries at all. First I waited for the Warners to become fully awake, and then I had them grab the ends of the sleeping bag and turn it around 180º. I then unzipped the sleeping bag and the sun's rays did the rest. (Normally I'd find a shiny object and shine it in his face.) Runt groaned, blinked his eyes open, yawned and stretched.

After our good mornings, Wakko pulled out his new magic refrigerator and a cooking pan. Dot took over for now. Since Mira taught her how to cook her famous scrambled eggs with mushrooms and jalapeño skins we all had a delicious breakfast. Ace especially loved his meal, since he ordered breakfast sausages alongside his (a treat for saving us the other day). Suddenly, we heard something moving closer toward us. When we looked in the noises general direction, we saw the tiger-lion-thing we first encountered when we got to this world.

We all were starting to freak out when Ace courageously walked up to the creature and began speaking to him in what I can only guess was the Valkyrian language. It sounded mostly Japanese with a small amount of Hungarian and Egyptian thrown in. (I think) There was no way any of us could tell what he was saying. But, whatever it was, the large feline responded in the same language. They began having a small conversation for a while until Ace walked back toward us. "So what did he say?" I asked him. Ace stared at me like I was crazy for a while. "You mean you didn't understand any of that?" He responded. "Lemmie guess, it sounded like English to you." Dot retorted. Ace simply nodded. "In that case, tell us what the tiger-thingy said." Dot added. "Well, first off, he said that he was called a 'shishitora'. It's Japanese for lion-tiger. And he said in exchange for our jalapeño scrambled eggs, he'll take us to the 'Silver Palace'." We all simply stared at Ace for a while then turned our gaze to the giant feline creature. It simply gave us a goofy grin similar to Ace's.

We agreed to feed the creature as long as it keeps its end of the bargain. "So, how did you do that?" Wakko asked out of curiosity. Ace simply tilted his head to the left to think about it and responded, "I don't really know Uncle Wakko. But we made a new friend."


	6. Chapter 6  Ghost Town

**Chapter 6**** – Ghost Town**

After the shishitora had finished its meal, it waited for the rest of the group to pack up their belongings. Then it led us northwest, just like Yakko had thought. We walked for a few hours until we came to a wide valley. We took in the amazing view for a time and luckily Dot had brought disposable camera with her. She had planned on taking plenty of photos of the animals at the zoo, but had forgotten that she even had it there. She noticed it when she was placing Ace and I in her back pack to carry us, however briefly.

After a little sightseeing, the creature continued guiding us toward the "Silver Palace". During the next few days we saw mountains, interesting rock formations that resembled Stone Henge and moai statues, and even saw the ruins of a village or town. The houses in the village/town were nearly hexagonal shape and approximately as large as any modern day suburban home on Earth, each home looking similar, yet different from the one next to it. There were even markets and shops nearby for different sales and items.

We all stopped for a bit inside one of the abandoned homes in order to get ourselves something to eat from Wakko's new favorite refrigerator. We put together our own sub sandwiches for that meal. Afterward, we rested for a bit and looked around town. It was only then that we had realized how lonely and sad it was here. I looked at all of the houses imagining all of the hustle and bustle. I tried to imagine all of the children playing in a nearby park with parents close by conversing with one another, people walking their pets and some even hurrying to work. The town looked similar to anything you would see on earth other than the lack of vehicles and asphalt roads. (They probably levitated to work or something.)

Now I was simply looking at a ghost town, not a living thing in sight. I decided to wander into another nearby house, with a front window smashed in, it was fairly easy. I hadn't wandered far when I discovered the body of a female lying on the ground in what seemed to be the living quarters of the home. I knew it was female by the long blond hair lying in a mess on the ground. I walked closer to the body to see exactly what she looked like, the pit of my stomach twisting and ill. The smell of death was potent and rancid. As I rounded the corner to get a better look at her face, I notice that she looked a lot like Mira. She was beautiful, with fare skin. I didn't know what color her eyes were because they were closed.

Examining the body more, I notice that her clothes were different from anything seen in Earth's fashions. She wore a violate dress that extended down to the middle of her shins, attached to the back of the dress was what seemed to be some sort of reverse apron that was shaped similar to the tales of a tuxedo. They were a velvet color with golden lace trim. The belt that wrapped around the woman's waist was made of cloth and was of velvet color as well, and it had a silver ring buckle over to the woman's right side. (I noticed that she was lying on her left side.) On the shoulders of the dress was a cape shaped in a similar fashion to the reverse apron that extended down to the woman's behind. The dress sleeves ran down to the woman's elbows and draped off of her skin after that, almost like the sleeves you would see on a maidens dress from the medieval times. It was rather beautiful in a sort of foreign kind of manner. The woman seemed to have died from a stab wound in the abdomen that ran through her completely.

The jewelry she was wearing looked similar to a wedding ring you would see on earth, so I figured that she was probably engaged or married. She was also wearing earrings made of silver with sapphire jewels embedded in them, as well as silver and sapphire bracelets. Judging by the way she was dressed and such, she was probably on her way out for a special occasion. She was probably well off too. Her furniture was elegant and lovely. The entry way led straight into the living room, which was decked out with fuchsias, lilacs, and other violet colors. She as well kept wood furniture that was darker in color to match her scheme.

The smell was starting to really get too me so I decided to leap back out the window before I lost my still-digesting-lunch. I bounded over back to the windowsill, took a moment to look back to the woman to pay respects for a small while and jumped to the ground, took a whiff of the fresh air, and solemnly walked back to the rest of the group. Even the Warners came back in a solemn mood when they met back with the group. "I never wanna see this much death ever again." Dot said nearly in tears. "I wanna go home." Wakko added. Yakko for once didn't say anything. He simply stared at the ground and kept to himself with a few tears escaping from his eyes and rolling down his cheeks.

"What happened here?" Ace asked the shishitora. At first the creature didn't say anything to him. Then Ace asked the question in Valkyrian. The shishitora began talking to Ace in the same language it seemed like it was a long story because it continued talking for another 10 minutes. When it was finished talking, Ace pulled his ears back, lowered his head and shed some tears. "What did he say?" I asked him gently. "He said that this was the work of the 'Crimson Lightning'." Ace answered. Dot and I understood what he meant completely. "Coluv did all of this?" I asked. Ace nodded his head. "He destroyed his entire race of people." He then added. "Using the Armageddon Blade, no doubt." Dot added in frustration. "Take it easy Dot. Remember you took him out. He can't hurt anyone else." Yakko reminded her. Seeing them so sad, it was like talking to and looking at completely different people. We all stood there silent for around 50 seconds. You could hear the wind blow from the east.

"Perhaps it's best if we move on." A deep soothing voice came from behind the group. Everyone was startled out of their slump when they heard this voice speak. At first, we thought it was the shishitora, until an even larger feline creature walked out of the rubble and approached our little group. "Greetings little ones, I am called Zouriinkusu, or 'elephant lynx'." It said in fluent English. Looking at it closely, it was a silver colored lynx of enormous size. It looked like it could carry around 10 grown human men on its back with ease. We were still in fright at the enormous size of the creature, and didn't know what to think when it moved closer up to Ace's face to have a better look at him. At first I thought it would make an attempt to eat Ace like the dragon did, then it spoke again. "So you are the new sage." It said to the little blue kitten. "Ace looked at me like he was asking permission to answer the giant feline. Noticing that Ace was looking at me for support, the creature turned to me and examined me close up. His nose was almost as big as my head and his eyes seemed to pierce right through my mind. "I...I'm..." was all I could spit out at the moment. Ace finished the line for me. "That's my mom." He said getting ready to defend my life if need be. "The huge creature looked at me in slight shock then regained his composure and began to chuckle a little. "Please excuse my rudeness, madam. I was merely curious." He finally said. "Might I meet you all outside of this dreary place? I have a message for the sage." He added then slowly turned around and walked away from our group and out of the town's limits.


	7. Chapter 7  The Queen of Angels

**Chapter 7**** – The Queen of Angels**

We met the giant lynx outside of the city of sorrow and death. It kind of felt better to be away from all of the lifeless bodies. (no disrespect) "I am sure you all have noticed by now that even though these people were slain around 10 earth years ago, they still look like they had died just yesterday." The giant creature said to us. "I actually was wondering that." I responded. "How is that possible, they should be skeletons by now?" "That, little one is simple to answer. With Valkyrians being tougher than humans, they take much longer to decompose. As well as, certain creatures of earth aren't present here on Valkyria. My mistress has been working tirelessly to give them a proper burial. However, she still awaits your arrival young sage." He said, turning to Ace. Ace just looked at the beast and tilted his head to the left in confusion. "You'll see soon enough." He said before any of us could ask any questions. Then he turned to the shishitora creature and said, "You have done well. Return to your family now." And with that, the tiger-like creature turned around and walked away from us.

He turned back to us, knelt down to allow us on his back and said, "It'll be much faster if I carry you. Please, climb on." We looked at each other for a short while dumbfounded and confused, until Yakko yelled, "I call shotgun!", and sprinted right up the giant creature's rib cage. With his thick fur, he barely felt the boy climb up and perch near his neck. Dot and Wakko quickly followed their brother and climbed up the beast. Ace used a little of his magic to levitate Runt, himself and I up and on the creature's back. I felt kind of nervous riding on a giant creature that could swallow me in a single gulp. I didn't really even know if we could trust this creature.

I didn't have a lot of time to contemplate our situation however. The Zouriinkusu quickly stood back up on its legs and took off as fast as any vehicle I've been in. If I had a guess, he was probably traveling around 65 miles per hour, slowing down only for meals and rest every 6 hours of running, and within 2 days we could see the Silver Palace in front of us. It was literally made from silver. From the walls of the kingdom town, to the bricks of the tower, everything was sterling silver. Even the front gates were made from pure silver. (I'll bet this place was quite annoying with your back to the sun.) However elegant, it still showed aging and neglect. Some of the walls were broken down, while others were stained with goldish-crimson blood. In one of the courtyards lied a cemetery that had what seemed like tones of headstones. And tending to those headstones was a familiar female figure. She was turned away from us so we couldn't see her face. However, I noticed that she had black hair styled in the same manner as Dot's, and was wearing a helmet that was light blue in color with gold edging. The rest of her was covered in a pink shawl and a gold colored fabric cloak.

She knelt down to one of the headstones and placed a single flower in front of it to pay her respects. When she stood up, she was approximately 5 feet and an inch tall, maybe taller. The Zouriinkusu slowed to a stop approximately 15 yards away from her, knelt back down and let us off of his back. Before he turned around to walk away and leave us, he said to us, "You all are here for a reason, but you must find that reason for yourselves. Approach the queen with caution, young ones. She isn't always gentle." And with that, he walked away and into the palace.

We approached the woman slowly and with some worry about what the Lynx meant as to his last statement. As we got closer to her she slowly turned around so we could see her face. She looked like Dot around the ripe age of 25. Her eyes were a silver blue and she had a calm and gentle look about her face. When Yakko and Wakko got a clear look at her the stiffened up, stuck out their tongues and began to pant like dogs rapidly wagging their tales and goo-goo eying the woman in front of us. As she approached close enough, they both shouted, "Helllllllooooooo Nurse!" and jumped to attempt to land in her arms and give her a big kiss on the lips. However, rather than catching them in mid flight, she stepped aside and let them crash to the ground with a THUD!

"Do you think she was expecting us to do that?" Wakko asked his brother who was lying on his face as well. "Uuuuuuh, I don't think so Wakko." He responded sarcastically. Then they quickly got to their feet and climbed up into the woman's arms and together gave her a huge kiss on the lips. They then jumped down and landed on their feet. "And they say it's hard to come back to someone who drops you like a rock!" Yakko said under his breath. "You both realize that I am Dot's transformed state during the Blood Star incident, right?" She stated with a calm and soothing voice that rang like an angel's chorus. Realizing that they had technically kissed their **sister** full on the lips, they began to spit to try to get the taste and germs off of their own lips. "Watch it!" She then retorted at their rude gesture.

"This question has been bugging me for a while now. Why do they call magic users 'wizards'?" Dot blurted out randomly. "The better question would be, Why did you have to open the portal so far away from the palace if you wanted us her in the first place?" Yakko asked trying to figure out the mystery of the first journey. "There is an explanation for that." The woman said bashfully. "We'd love to hear it." Yakko retorted crossing his arms and looking cocky. The woman began to blush a little, placed her right hand on the back of her head and said, "I'm still not used to controlling my powers yet." She then stuck her tongue out and gave a little laugh. That was the clincher, all of our knees buckled and we all collapsed to the ground at the shear irony of the whole thing. Dot then retorted, "Never mind, I think I got the answer to my first question."

The woman took us into the silver palace and introduced herself. "By the way, I am Queen Angelina Contessa Valhalla." She said. "And we're..." Yakko and Wakko said in harmony, but they were interrupted by Queen Angelina. "Yes, I know who you are. Especially you Dot. We shared a single consciousness once. All of your memories are shared with me now." "That's a scary thought." Dot retorted. "If you will all follow me, we'll talk more during dinner." Queen Angelina stated and then showed our group the dining hall. In the center of a large room that looked mid-renaissance was a 50 foot long table filled with all kinds of fresh cooked foods cuisines. It was more of a feast then a dinner. Wakko stared at the table simply drooling three gallons of saliva every minute. He then slapped his mouth closed reared back and revved up like he was going to race a formula one race car on foot. Dot came in from behind him and placed her brother in a full nelson hold. "Save some food for the rest of us, Wakko" She stated sternly to him. Wakko simply looked at the table and pouted like a hurt puppy.


	8. Chapter 8  The Sage's Academies

**Chapter 8**** – The Sage's Academies**

At the dinner table, Queen Angelina displayed even the table manners of a queen. The Zouriinkusu was present and kept to himself near the back of the room. While Wakko was stuffing his face Dot looked around as if she was looking for something. She glanced at the food she gathered on her plate and at everything on the table. "Where did all of this come from? It's not as if she has a royal cook." She asked her brother Yakko. "I cooked all of this myself." Queen Angelina answered from behind the two siblings. "The Zouriinkusu is very wise and taught me a great number of spells that the residents of this planet use to use to prepair for the arrival of guests." "It's all magic food then." Yakko retorted. "Magically cooked." Queen Angelina corrected. "So tell me of what has happened on Earth lately. What sort of adventures have you been on in the past year? Aside from the Blood Star Incident." She then asked the Warners.

Dot began to describe the story of our encounter with Dr. Ragnarok. When she had finished the story, the Zouriinkusu spoke, "It seems like you six have been through quite a bit lately." I was still scared of the elephant sized lynx so I decided to say nothing. "I just wish Mira could have come with us. She'd love to see this place. Except for all of the dead people and the quiet loneliness of not having another humanoid to even talk to..." Yakko stated. Queen Angelina let out a small giggle and continued daintily eating her food. All the while Wakko was well underway of cleaning off the entire table.

"Here is a question that has most likely been bugging all of us since we arrived here. What is this all about anyway? Why did you even need to open a portal and bring us here in the first place?" Dot finally blurted out. Queen Angelina pulled her eating utensils away from herself, chewed the bit of poultry she had in her mouth, and swallowed. Throughout the entire moment, all went so silent you could have heard a pin drop. "It's rather embarrassing." She finally said. "I need the sage to help me recreate the Valkyrian race." The three siblings looked at each other in confusion, as well as Runt, Ace and I. Queen Angelina then closed her eyes, leaned back in her chair and sighed. "A Valkyrian is normally created when an enormous surge of life energy compresses into a single spot. A phenomenon that has yet to be discovered by Earth science or explained by any other science." She said solemnly. "Dot, when you drew in all of your friend's spirits during the Blood Star Incident, you brought together that massive amount of life energy. Creating the phenomenon all on your own, and inadvertently creating me. When you transformed back into your original state after the battle, you set me free and granted me my own life and consciousness, and I found myself here on Valkyria. However, I am now the only Valkyrian left in the entire universe other than the Sage Vuloc, which has now taken the form of the kitten known as Ace." "So, what do you want Ace to do? Stay with you and breed?" I sternly said to her. Yakko, kissed his hand and waved to all that would turn their attention to him and shouted, "Goodnight everybody!" I just gave him an evil stare.

"I don't think that is possible in his current state." Queen Angelina pointed out. "I'm not gonna go into the details, so just trust me on that." "Well then what?" I shouted impatiently. "Please do not be rude to the queen." The Zouriinkusu said as it turned to me slightly baring its teeth. Queen Angelina turned toward the enormous creature and gestured that it was alright for me to ask that question. "There is an ancient spell in one of the Sage's Academies that I have not yet been able to locate yet. That spell is capable of granting one wish of the one who casts it." She finally said to us. "And you want our help finding that spell." Dot responded with slight frustration. "Actually, I was going to propose a game." Queen Angelina stated. The warners gave her their undivided attention at that point. "First, let me explain something to you. Since you all were touched with Ace's magic at one point, you all have within yourselves the potential to cast one single spell. This is due to your bodies collecting and storing that energy it was touched by. However, after you use that potential to cast that one spell, your body then builds an 'immunity' of sorts to that energy and can no longer store that energy." I finally understood how I was able to use the teleportation spell during our encounter with Dr. Ragnarok and why I was never able to recast it afterward. I had already used up my one spell.

"The rules of the game are simple." Queen Angelina continued. "The first to find the 'spell of wishes' can use it for whatever they want." Dot shot her hand up and started grunting, "Ooh, ooh. Pick me, pick me." Looking annoyed and confused, Queen Angelina pointed to Dot and said, "Yes dear, what is it?" "Ace and I are the only ones that can read the Valkyrian language, why is that?" Dot asked like she was four years old once again. "First of all, Ace is the sage, reading and speaking his home language is written in his blood. You however, temporarily **became** Valkyrian when you transformed into... **me**. You can read Valkyrian because that part of you never really left." The Queen answered. "Oh. I'm even more confused now." Dot said. "You can read Valkyrian because you just can." Queen Angelina said in frustration. "Oh, well that makes much more sense." Dot said reassuringly. Queen Angelina slapped her forehead and sighed. "We shall begin tomorrow after lunch, to give you all enough time to rest.

After our delicious meal, Queen Angelina and the Zouriinkusu led us to two bed chambers, one for the boys and one for the girls. When we entered our sleeping quarters, it was a sight to behold. The bed was enormous around a jumbo-king size, the bed frames corner posts extended around 10 feet up and still didn't come close to the two story high ceiling of the silvery-white room. The walls were of equal distance apart as the ceiling was from the floor, the far wall with a large arched window located halfway up the wall. Even the door was exquisitely elegant with hand carvings that resembled exotic flowers and plants. The sheets on the bed were pearl white with a silvery hue and the covers were slightly darker in gray tone but still looked silver. The pillows were pearl white with a silvery hue like the sheets. The furniture was carved from a light oak looking wood with another silvery hue. Attached to the room was a porcelain and silver-sand colored tile bathroom complete with luxury bath tub, a separate shower stall, toilet and sink.

Suddenly, our exhaustion caught up with us both, and we were pretty sure that the boys felt the same way. Dot staggered toward the truly inviting bed and plopped down and nearly sunk deep into the cloud-like mattress, scooted underneath the soft pillow covers and sheets, and quickly drifted off into a deep peaceful sleep. I was feeling exhausted as well, so I moved closer to the bed to jump up onto it. When I landed on the covers, it was as if I literally was walking on a cloud. I walked in as far as I could, curled up and fell right to sleep. With that sleep, I dreamed of sunlight and clouds that night. It was the most invigorating sleep I ever had in my life. I found myself nearly wishing I could stay in this world forever.


	9. Chapter 9  First Academy: Fire

**Chapter 9**** – First Academy: Fire**

The sun peeked into the bedroom through the window that morning and Dot woke up before I did. She yawned, stretched, and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Looking around at her surroundings, she began to recall the events that had happened throughout this journey of our and even recalled the proposal from Queen Angelina Contessa Valhalla. "The game" as she put it seemed simple enough, but if what awaited them at the other academies was anything similar to what they encountered before, then there had to be more to this game than anyone thought.

Just the same, Yakko was also awoken by the rising sun of this world. "This world is almost just like Earth." He thought to himself. He was right, too. The rising sun was golden yellow and transformed the morning sky from dark shadows, to a bright red hue, and finally to a light blue color with puffy, white clouds floating aimlessly through and forming various shapes. The landscape wasn't much different from Earth either, the green grass expanded through the hills, mountains with their snow-capped peaks off in the distance, a forest of trees off to the far left, hiding a vast number of creatures that weren't much different from the creatures of Earth. He found himself wondering if **this **could somehow become his home, and if his siblings would agree to this. He wondered this until he remembered that everything that once lived on this world is now **dead**.

He then began to wonder what she was doing now and imagined her arguing with Mr. Plottz about whether or not they would return and what they were going to do with the studio water tower. Chuckling at the very thought of Mira out smarting Plottz in the same manner she constantly out witted him, his brother and his sister, he suddenly realized that, no matter how frustrating it was, they needed to go back to Earth in the end. Yakko turned toward the room's sofa where Wakko lay fast asleep still and wondered what he was dreaming about. Suddenly, he witnessed his brother kick his legs just like a puppy during its dreams. He looked around for Runt who fell asleep near the bed on the side closest to the door and saw him doing the same thing.

Recalling the 'game' proposal from the queen of this castle, he went over to his brother and shook him awake. Wakko didn't awaken until he instinctively rolled off of the couch and landed with a thump on the ground. Afterward, he shot up like a rocket wailing in confusion. When he finally calmed down, he noticed his brother looking at him like he was clinically insane. Wakko simply stood up straight and gave his older brother a goofy grin.

They walked out of their granted rooms and met each other in the hallway. Yakko and Dot in deep thought about the thing they had wondered and thought about, Wakko shifting his focus between them while they stood there silently, trying to figure out what to say to the other. Wakko was beginning to worry about his siblings thinking that the earlier journey had taken its toll on them. "Hey Yakko..." "I was thinking..." they spoke at the same time. "You first." Yakko politely said to his sister. "I think we need to stay together for the duration of this 'game' the queen had proposed to us all." Dot solemnly said to her older brother. Yakko looked at his sister in amazement. "What makes you say that?" He asked her. "What she said about us being only able to cast one spell and that's it. Also what if there are more monsters waiting for us at the other academies?" Yakko thought about it for a while. "We can handle anything that comes our way." He exclaimed with confidence. "Yakko, now isn't the time for your pride to get in the way, this is serious. We need to stick together for this..." "And the rules are whoever finds the spell first, gets to use it, right?" Yakko interrupted his sister. "We can't just help Ace on this one. It's not just him playing. It's us as well. And I plan on winning and having my wish granted."

"And what would you wish for when you get the spell?" Wakko asked his brother. "**I don't know!**" Yakko shouted, getting within four inches of his brother's face and scaring the daylights out of him. Wakko's eyes began to tear up from the sudden outburst and he buried his face into his sister's chest and began to cry out loud. "What's the matter with you, Yakko? He just asked you a question." Dot scolded her older brother. Then she began to attempt to comfort the crying Wakko. "Sorry Wakko, I just have a lot on my mind." Yakko said sternly. "That's not exactly an apology." Dot continued to scold Yakko. "What do you want me to do? Get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness?" Yakko stated slightly flustered at his sister. "It would be a good start." Dot retorted. "**Fine, then maybe it would be better if I went on my own during this so called game?**" Yakko snapped. "**Just go away Yakko. If you are gonna be rude, then just leave! We don't need you anyway!**" Dot was shocked at the words that had just come out of her mouth. She gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth to prevent any more hash words from escaping. However, it was too late. Yakko was fuming by now and didn't need to say any more to her. He just turned around and stormed off down the hall until he disappeared from her sight. Dot, regretting everything she had said to her brother, slumped down in despair, Wakko now trying to comfort his sister, seeing that she truly regretted her words. Dot solemnly looked at her brother and said, "Now I know why Mira always did everything she could to prevent us from fighting like that. I hate myself now." Afterward, she closed her eyes and silently sobbed to herself.

Within 20 minutes of that ordeal, the rest of us had risen from your sleep and had made our way to the banquet hall where we ate breakfast and received a better map of this world. Annoyed and confused a little, I asked Queen Angelina, "So, why didn't you send us a photo of this map rather than giving us that..." I cleared my throat to think of the appropriate words to use, "interesting drawing?" "I found this after I sent you my drawn map." She replied a bit sheepishly. I nearly slammed my face against the table at the irony of the situation. Normally Dot would have giggled at the notion of the event that had taken place, but she was still in slight despair at the things she had said to her brother and barely noticed the hilarity of the situation. She turned to us and gave us a depressed courtesy laugh and went back to staring at the table. It was then I noticed that Yakko wasn't eating with us. "Where's Yakko?" I asked. Dot didn't answer, only widened at her eyes at the very thought at explaining her actions to everybody else and nearly panicked. "There was a disagreement, and he started the game without us." Wakko answered for her. Dot looked at her brother with a slight "thank you" in her eyes, and gave him a small smile.

"So, what are we gonna do?" Ace asked. "Well, I think the larger the group we have working together, the better chances we have at finding the spell of wishes." I said then added, "I've already used my one spell anyway. So all I can do is provide moral support from the sidelines." "That's not true Rita. You could provide distractions. Definitely, definitely distractions." Runt tried to reassure me with. Suddenly a small dragon-fly (literally) began buzzing around his head and he started chasing it to try to chomp down on it. "It doesn't take much to distract you, Runt." I said sarcastically under my breath. Normally Dot would have added her two cents in by saying something like, "Whoa, dumber than advertised", however she simply remained in her own little world. It was rather hard to watch her live in her own depression like that. Something definitely happened between Dot and Yakko. We had all agreed to stick together and were off, after Runt learned that a dragon-fly's bite hurt like 40 bee stings all at once and in the same place. It was rather cute to watch the large dog run away from a tiny pea-sized flying lizard.

We made our way across the northern plains, a familiar territory considering that we found out that the academy that we were attacked by the large black dragon was called the "Academy of Flames" and needed to check it off of our list as fast as possible. When we got there, we immediately got to work at looking through the various books looking for something called "the spell of wishes". We had looked for what seemed like hours when we heard a rumbling noise in the academy's arena. Suddenly the temperature of the room began to rise exponentially, almost up to 100º in 10 minutes. We decided to make our way to the arena before we died of heat stroke inside the room. When we reached the arena, in its center, stood a gigantic horse that looked like it was made from cooled down lava with a mane made of inferno flames and eyes that looked like miniature suns. When is spoke the inside of its mouth was alight with red flames and it generated a heat wave for every word said. "Who are you, who seek the challenge of the spell of wishes?" it said with an angry tone.

We looked at each other confused and tired from the intense heat. Ace, Runt and I got down into a defensive position, however we were about to feint from the heat. Wakko suddenly came forward and said to the creature, "We are those who travel with the Sage. We seek the answers to rebuild the Valkyrian race." Then, just as fast as it rose, the temperature dropped to a mere spring day. "Here is your challenge. Somewhere in this academy is an item that does not belong. Find it and bring it to me. You have three hours. If you fail, I shall incinerate you where you stand." And with that, he disappeared into a burst of flames that shrank down to a candle flame and fizzled out. "Wakko, how did you know to answer that way?" Dot asked him. "Queen Angelina told me to say that before breakfast." He answered. Then he pulled out the magic refrigerator from his gag-bag and took out four one-liter sized bottles of spring water from it and we all drank to rehydrate ourselves. He then whipped out an entire five **gallon** jug of water for himself and chugged the whole thing down. We then began searching for something that seemed out of place.

After ten minutes of rest we all decided to split up and search the entire academy in sections. Ace learned a temporary translation spell for the rest of us so we could read every language in existence for approximately 4 hours. It would prove to be an extremely useful spell indeed. Each of us began to search our agreed upon sections and search for the "item that didn't belong". When Dot had reached her assigned area in the classrooms, who did she find there struggling to read the Valkyrian language, but her stubborn brother Yakko. Still feeling sorry about the things she said she went to her brother to apologize. "So... Whatcha doin?" she said shyly and with sadness in her throat. Yakko shot up with a start, "Dot? What are ya trying to do? Give me a heart attack?" he stated grabbing his chest from the shock. "Sorry Yakko. I didn't mean to scare you." She replied with her own surprise. "So, how do you plan on reading that book?" "Uuuuuuuh, I don't know. I guess I didn't think this solo thing through too well did I?" He said sheepishly. "Rrrrrriiiiight." Dot replied reiterating one of Yakko's famous lines. She did this to try to lighten the mood to bring in her apology. However, her plan backfired and Yakko took her impression as an insult to his very nature. "Did you come here just to mock me?" He asked her in frustration, the tension mounting up between them. "No, I..." Dot began, but Yakko decided to interrupt her and give her a piece of his mind. "Look Dot just because you are the only one of us, who can read this stupid language, doesn't mean you should throw it in our faces." "But, that's not..." She tried to defend herself. However Yakko interrupted and never allowed her to say much from this point on. "No, you listen to me, I'm not gonna sit here and hear you insult me any longer, usually I'd just insult you right back, but enough's enough and I'm putting my foot down on this one. Just leave me alone, 'you don't actually need me anyway', do you?" Listening to Yakko say those words as if he believed them, nearly crushed Dot's heart into a million little pieces. She dropped to her knees as he stormed out of the room and began to sob heavily, regretting everything that she had ever said to him that morning. Yakko actually listening to his sister cry like that stopped in his tracks, and turned around to see what he had done to her.

With his own heart breaking into many pieces, he tried to hold back his own tears at this point simply for the sake of his pride. Turning away from his sister, for a while he began to silently cry himself, mentally kicking himself for making her sob so much. However, his pride told him that he was in the right and there was no need to apologize for anything. They both stayed where they were at for around twenty more minutes, Yakko crying to himself and Dot sobbing out loud with her head pressed against one of the classroom desks, a pool of tears dripping from its surface. Yakko finally sighed off his own sob, and shook off the sadness. He then approached his sister and said softly, "Come on, I need help reading some of these books." Dot whipping off her tear stained face solemnly nodded and helped her brother read the books that he presented to her. Sniffling and whipping access tears from her eyes and cheeks, there was one book in particular that interested Yakko. The title read, "Basic control of the various elements of nature." They flipped to a random page in the book and Dot read to her brother the methods on controlling water in its entirety. Describing to him the concentration skills, and the fact that you needed to move your body as if it were one with the water, to fully control the surrounding water using the spell, Dot was happy that she at least could be useful to her brother, and her sadness was at last beginning to fade away.

Before they knew it their three hours had nearly gone through and when Dot had finally looked at her watch, she began to panic, realizing that they all would be burned to death if they didn't find the object that was out of place. Feeling like she had failed the entire group, she began to feel resentment for her brother in dragging her into a useless search for random spells. "Oh, what am I gonna do?" She shouted to herself. "Huh, what's wrong Dot?" Yakko responded to his now panicking sister. "Oh, I was supposed to look for an 'item that didn't belong' but instead, I wound up helping you read for three hours." She stated, panicking even more. "Why?" Yakko asked. "If we don't find it in three hours, the flaming-horse-monster is going to incinerate us alive!" She shouted, nearly back into tears. "Holy moley, why didn't you say something?" Yakko said in shock, beginning to help his sister look for something that might be out of place. "I was trying to apologize for saying that 'we didn't need you' earlier. I was wrong and didn't mean it. I...I'm **so** sorry, Yakko." She blurted out. Yakko stopped searching and simply stared at his sister in bewilderment. He then began feeling the guilt of everything he had said to her. However, before he could say anything, they heard an ear shattering horses neigh, and the large flaming horse burst through one of the walls of the classroom. "Aaaaaah!" they both shrieked and ran out the closest door, which led to the battle arena of the building. Outside the large flaming horse began to chase them until Dot stumbled near the center of the arena and twisted her ankle. Grabbing at the hurt limb she writhed with the pain of the injury. With the flaming horse closing in on them rapidly, Yakko had to think fast if he was going to rescue his sister. "Aquameisa" He shouted while bringing his hands down to the ground and slowly bringing them back up toward his face. Somehow he could feel the pressure of the water on top of his hands as if they were lifting hundreds of gallons. After a few seconds of struggling, he finally felt the pressure lessen to nearly nothing. During that whole moment, the ground beneath them began to rumble. And the moment that Yakko felt the pressure lift off of his hands, water pipes burst from several places around the arena and began to gush forth cold water. Remembering that he needs to move his body as if it were one with the water, he began to move his arms and legs as fluidly as he could and stayed in constant motion. Along with his motion, the sprays of water followed him like it was obeying verbal commands from Yakko, moving as he did.

Flinging his arms forward one at a time and pulling them back, Yakko flung large amounts of water at the flaming horse, striking it in the face. The clash of hot temperatures and cold water produced enough steam to nearly cover the entire arena. Yakko repeated this process, gathering more water every time he brought his arm back from throwing his initial wave. Several times he had struck the giant horse with the water and each time the horse was struck, it began to shrink slightly until it was about the size of a real horse. "Dot, I'm sorry too, I said some things that I didn't mean as well." Yakko said as he continued bombarding the flaming horse with water. "Things I regret, things I didn't mean." Yakko then thrust his hands as high into the air as he could, and spun them in circles, gathering as much water as he could around 20 feet above the flaming horse, who was dazed from the attacks. "I hope you can forgive me someday. Even if I don't deserve it." And with that, he threw his arms down toward the ground, bringing hundreds of gallons of water crashing down on top of the flaming horse. An enormous cloud of steam arose from the area where the water met the flames of the horse, and when it all cleared, the horse could be seen as no larger than a Christmas tree ornament, fallen on its side and breathing heavily.

Yakko, also breathing heavily, realized that it was finally all over and collapsed to his knees. The rest of us saw the battle from one of the balconies of the second floor and rushed to their aid as fast as we could. However, by the time we had gotten there, it was all over. Suddenly the flaming horse stood up and walked over to Yakko and Dot and spoke to them. "You have passed my test. You brought the item that did not belong and you showed it to me." The two siblings simply looked at each other in confusion. "But, we didn't show you anything." Yakko told him. "On the contrary, you showed me the tension mounting between two siblings, and you settled your disputes during our battle." The two simply looked at each other again even more confused. "Wait a minute... the tension between us was the item that didn't belong?" Yakko asked. "That is correct young one. Family is the most important part of our lives. Disputes between siblings should not tear that family apart. The fact that you were willing to put you pride aside to apologize to each other is very comforting." It stated. "The spell of wishes cannot be found materially. However, when six have become one, the spell shall be revealed." He then added and fizzed out like a candle flame in the wind.


	10. Chapter 10  Second Academy: Water

**Chapter 10**** – Second Academy: Water**

"How did you know that the academies had underground plumbing?" I had to ask. "Oh, easy. From this." Yakko then pulled from his trouser pocket a crumpled up piece of paper. When he un-crumpled it to show us, it turned out to be a blueprint for the basic structure of the academies. It even showed the underground piping for the water and sewage systems. "How did you understand this without Ace's translation spell?" Wakko then asked his brother in his own confusion. "That's easy too. I studied the whole thing and simply connected the pieces in my head together... What translation spell?" Yakko said back to his brother. "Oh, Ace found a spell that can help us read any language in existence for four hours out of each day." Wakko answered. "You mean four hours of being able to read even Valkyrian, and a twenty hour waiting period?" Yakko asked trying to figure out the exact meaning behind his brother's explanation. "Only if you cast the spell just after sunrise of each new day." Wakko stated. Yakko was at a loss for words and still slightly confused as to how the spell worked, but he also was sure that he would eventually figure it out.

"Well sibs, looks like I'm out for the whole magic casting thing. Now we are down to Runt, Wakko and Dot as backup for this little game." Yakko deduced. "Who would have thought that Queen Angelina's idea of fun would put lives in jeopardy? Let's go back to the palace and let her have a piece of our minds." Dot suggested. The rest of us nodded our heads at the notion and we then made our way back to the Silver Palace. When we arrived at the Silver Palace, it was early morning the next day and we were exhausted from traveling so instead of seeking out Queen Angelina to chew her out, we simply endured the journey from the front door to our beds. When we reached our destinations, we collapsed upon the cloud like beds and each fell right to sleep almost immediately.

This time I dreamt of home back at Mira's house, eating a can of the most delicious tuna and a bowl of cold 2% milk. About halfway through my dream, the room turned dark and my meal vanished from existence. Wondering what happened, I took a look around only to see nothing but darkness all around me. From the darkness, I could hear the voices of Yakko, Wakko, Dot, Runt, and Mira speaking all incoherently at the same time. I began to wander through the darkness in the direction I thought the voices were coming from until the scenery changed and I saw Ace battling against a humongous creature that looked like it was made of silver. It was humanoid in shape and its arms were long enough to be placed on the ground and still need to have their elbows slightly bent. It also stood hunched slightly forward and still was approximately 60 feet tall or taller. Normally, when it opened its mouth, it looked like a human trying to move its mouth with its face completely covered. That was until it opened its mouth for an attack. At this point it opened its mouth so wide, the silver split open and looked like it was simply melting away. Even though it moved fairly slowly, it was still formidable for Ace. Inside the open mouth of the silver monster, looked like some sort of relic that represented five claws and a cannon barrel come from deep in the back of its throat. A few inches in front of the barrel's opening, silvery blue energy began to charge and the erupted in a powerful energy beam aimed straight at me. Ace flew into the beam's path just before it struck the ground where I was standing. However Ace's shield cracked and shattered rather quickly. Ace and I were both engulfed in the beam and I awoke with a start, sweating and cold.

Breathing heavily, I looked around the room and saw Dot sleeping peacefully under the covers of the bed. Maybe I was worrying too much, but I still needed to check on Ace to make sure, after all, I actually have come to think of him as my real son. (Even though I never would say that out loud.) I jumped down off of the soft bed and landed silently on the floor. I walked over to the door leading to the hallway and nudged the door open with my nose and head. The door was pretty heavy and moving it wasn't easy. Turning to my left I made my way to the boys' room to check up on Ace and the others. The door to the boys' room was slightly open when I arrived, so I pushed the door farther open as best as I could with my left paw and my head. Peeking in, I could see Runt sleeping near the bed with Ace curled up next to him. In the bed was Wakko sleeping under the covers and on a nearby couch was Yakko covered up in a thick warm blanket with a pillow under his head. It was amazing how we all could go to sleep when it was still light out.

I thought to myself that it might be wise to bring plenty of camping gear from now on so we can set up camp during the night and travel by day. I yawned deeply and decided that I would say something after we all had woken up from our sleep. Then I made my way back to the room, jumped back upon the bed, curled up and fell fast asleep once again.

I awoke once again later in the evening of that day and could hear clanking noises beyond the bedroom door. I looked around and noticed that Dot had woken up before me and had exited the room. I began to wonder what all of that clanking was about. So I leaped from the bed and exited the room, pushing the door slightly open with my head. I emerged to see the Warners rummaging through Wakko's gag-bag looking for what seemed to be camping supplies. They had gathered blankets, sleeping bags, a lantern, a tent, and other supplies all together. It seemed like we all had the same idea after this occurrence. I walked up to the group and yawned deeply, suddenly Dot leaned back and yawned after me, then Ace and Runt at the same time, then Yakko. Wakko held his breath for a time trying to hold in his yawn, but he couldn't last. He tilted his head back and gave out the biggest yawn of the entire group. Suddenly every one turned to me and stated, "Don't do that! It's contagious!" "Sorry." Was my only sheepish answer. "Looks like you guys had the same idea that I had." I finally stated after another ten seconds of silence. "I dunno, what was your idea?" Yakko said rhetorically. "Funny." I remarked to him. He simply responded with a big goofy grin. "Now all we need it a portable TV and marshmallows!" Yakko then stated sarcastically. Wakko reached into his gag-bag and pulled out a small six inch portable television. "Sorry Yakko, I can't seem to find the marshmallows." He stated with all innocence and honesty. Yakko simply slapped his forehead and pulled his hand down his face in slight frustration. It took us another half of an hour to get all we needed for the remainder of the journey. After that we decided to await Queen Angelina's arrival to give her that piece of our minds.

Night fell and she never showed, we were about to turn in and go back to bed when Wakko spotted a figure in the distance. "Look guys, over there!" he shouted to us. We waited until the figure came close enough to see. I turned out not to be the Queen, but the Zouriinkusu. He approached us and stared at us for a short while. "So you have defeated the Guardian of Flames?" he finally asked. "Yah, uuuuuuuh I guess that was him. Giant flaming horse, right?" Yakko answered. "That is correct young one." Was the enormous creature's response. "Uuuuuuuh about that," Yakko's first two words melding nearly together as he spoke, "We had no idea that this 'game' would put our lives in jeopardy. We need to talk to the queen." The large lynx reared back in surprise and then chuckled at Yakko. "If you can catch up to her, you can give her your lecture." "You're gonna make us search all of the academies, aren't you." Yakko deduced with slight frustration. The Zouriinkusu simply nodded. "Well sibs, I guess we should get moving." Yakko said even more frustrated. "Awe." Wakko and Dot complained. "Hey, it's not like we've got a whole lot of choices here." Yakko reminded his siblings.

The Zouriinkusu knelt down to indicate that it would let us ride it again. "Let me get you started by taking you to the next academy." It said to us. "Great, more incentive." Yakko stated sarcastically. "Would you rather walk?" The creature retorted. Yakko simply gave the creature a sheepish grin and we climbed up on his back. Off like a shot, the giant lynx took off with great speeds. Ace and I were barely able to hold on to his fur and before we knew what was going on, he screeched to a halt. We were there at the next academy. "This is the Academy of Water." The Zouriinkusu told us before turning around and dashing off with the same speed he used to get us here. At least this time we knew to look for the academy's guardian rather than aimlessly search through random books.

We walked into the academy's arena and there in the center was a siren mermaid. She was gorgeous, with blond wavy hair that extended down nearly half of her tail, enchanting sapphire-blue eyes and fair white skin. If she had human legs, she would stand around 5 feet and 7 inches tall. If you count the tail fins, around 6 feet long. She had the torso of a well endowed female human and her blond hair miraculously constantly covered her breasts. (Gotta love censorship!) Upon seeing her in full view, Yakko and Wakko zipped up to her as fast as lightning bolts, stiffened their back and began panting like dogs. Then they howled in unison, "Hellllooooo Nurse!", and before Dot could even make an attempt to catch them, they leaped into the air and landed into her awaiting arms, and both gave her a big smooch on the cheeks, then they went back to panting like dogs with hearts in their eyes.

Dot walked up to the guardian, who still had the Warner brothers in her arms, and said, "Go ahead, you can eat them if you want." She then turned to us and added, "Obscure joke. Read 'The Odyssey'." The guardian looked at the two brothers, one at a time, tilted her head as if she was considering it, extended her arms and dropped the brothers on their rear ends. "I don't think so." She then stated. "So, what's your test?" Dot asked as the rest of us joined her at her side. The brothers stood up and listened to the guardian's request. Suddenly, the area around us changed to an ocean, yet we didn't sink into the water. "Phaboo!" Wakko exclaimed. "An illusion?" I asked. "Maybe, or we really need to start eating better." Yakko stated sarcastically. "My test for you is..." the guardian said in her melodic voice. "Find me, without using any magic." And with that, she sank into the water and vanished. The waves began to get rougher and rougher, making it difficult to see anything. "There she is..." Wakko was just about to point out until a shark jumped out of the spot where he was pointing and nearly bit his arm off. "Whoa...not." he finished his sentence, yanking his arm back.

"I didn't think it was going to be that easy." I thought to myself. "We have to find her before we get devoured by these sharks." We stood back to back and huddled as close to each other as possible, me on Dot's shoulder, Ace on Wakko's, and Runt at Yakko's right side/Wakko's left. I noticed dark patches in the blue water, despite the rough waves. One of them moved in close to us and a shark had lunged out of it, nearly taking me right off of Dot's shoulder. I looked around at all of the dark spots in the water doing my best to keep track of them. There were around a total of 17 shadowy spots moving around all the same length. I noticed only one looked obviously skinnier then the rest. **That** had to be her. I followed the shadowy area and pointed at it. "There you are!" I yelled. The shadow rose from the surface and there she was jumping out of the water like a dolphin. She re-orientated herself to seem as if she was standing up like a human and hovered over the water which vanished and we were back in the academy's arena. She began to applaud our work and said, "Well done. Very well done." Wakko took this opportunity for a visual gag and whipped out a charcoal steak to show everybody. Dot gave her brother a dirty look and smacked the dish right out of his hand. "Put that away!" She said. The guardian giggled at Wakko's little joke and continued on by saying, "The spell of wishes cannot me found materially, but when all is lost and you have no more to give, find the strength that lies deep within." She then leaned over to the two brothers. "And this is for you two brave warriors." She then gave them both a kiss on the right cheek. They both stiffened up at that notion, literally cracked and fell into 40 or 50 pieces for Dot to put back together. The guardian actually then broke out into uncontrollable laughter and we joined her. Until Wakko said, "I don't get it." Then it was a simultaneous event of the rest of smacking our foreheads.

After that fiasco, we decided to set up camp in the main entryway of the academy. The guardian even decided to lend us her company. (I think she was hoping for another kiss from the brothers who were goo-goo-eying her nearly the whole time.) Wakko eventually pulled out his magic fridge and we ate a delicious meal. Then we set up the tent, unrolled our sleeping bags, and bid each other good night. The bags obviously weren't as comfortable as the cloud-like beds back at the castle, but they were good enough and we had a good night's rest.


	11. Chapter 11  Third Academy: Earth

**Chapter 11**** – Third Academy: Earth**

A similar dream ran through my head that night. It was strikingly similar to the first one only the creature had changed shapes. It was no longer humanoid, it was shaped like a giant, silver lion and this time the battle took place in the middle of the Warner Brothers movie lot. Buildings were destroyed and lit ablaze, the water tower was knocked over and had crushed the Warner siblings, and Mira was lying next to me wearing the same outfit as the woman I found in the house in the ghost town. Ace was again fighting the humongous creature, mono a mono. He seemed to have the upper hand for a while, however it also seemed like his attacks weren't even damaging the beast. Ace flew by and threw a couple of fireballs at the creature's head and they exploded upon impact. However, the beast still didn't so much as wince at the attacks. When Ace had flown in front of the beast's face, the creature opened his mouth slowly and gave a huge, deep roar. With the roar, came out some sort of energy wave, destroying everything in its path and headed straight for me. Again Ace flew in front of the blast and tried to protect me with his barrier. And again, the barrier shattered no more than three seconds after the initial impact and we were both blown backward.

I shot up with a start, breathing heavily and soaked in my own perspiration. I rapidly looked around to find out if everyone was either dead or merely asleep. I soon discovered that they all were merely asleep, and I sighed in my relief. Looking around I could see that the only ones in the tent were Dot, Ace, Runt, and I. "Where are Yakko and Wakko?" I wondered. I also noticed that the tent door was unzipped, so I decided that they probably thought that they needed to go to the bathroom or something.

The silvery-blue moonlight shone through the unzipped doorway of the tent. Judging from the intensity of the light I figured that it was probably a full moon tonight. I quietly stepped out of the tent to see how similar the Valkyrian moon looked to Earth's moon. As I got closer to the door, I could hear a faint melody ringing from the center of the arena. Poking my head out to investigate, I saw the water guardian softly singing to the moon. Yakko and Wakko sitting closely in front of her listening intently nearly crying from the sound of the notes ringing through their ears. From what I could hear, the song was about a family she once knew and lost long ago. Silently, I crept up in between them and sat down to listen some more. Her singing was quiet, yet enchanting and somehow...sad, even in the song's end when she had found her lost family and won true love.

Her song ended solemnly and beautifully. The two brothers quietly applauded her so as to not wake anyone. My eyes were still watered up from the lyrics of the song, so I whipped them away from my eyes. The water guardian giggled and motioned a curtsy then floated down to the ground and folded her tail under her hips to sit up straight. "Thank you Yakko. Thank you Wakko." She then sighed and tilted her head back so she could bathe her face in the light of the moon. "It's been some time since anyone has heard my singing. I really appreciate you coming out here to listen to me." She added allowing a teardrop to fall from her face. "Why do you sing it though?" I asked, startling both Yakko and Wakko. "My mother taught it to me when I was little. Long before I became the guardian of water." She explained. "I sing it every night to remind myself of her." "What do you mean, 'became the guardian'?" I asked confused. "She explained that to us before she sang to us." Yakko answered. "You see the guardians of the academies apparently are all originally Valkyrians who agreed to protect the secret of the spell of wishes by becoming parts of the key that seals off the final test." "So, in order to retrieve the spell of wishes, we must pass the tests of all of the guardians first. Then complete the 'final test'?" I asked trying to figure the whole thing out. "Uuuuuuuuhhh," Yakko started then the water guardian finished for him, "That's exactly correct." "You don't suppose you could give us a hint as to what the other tests are?" Yakko asked coyly. "I can't." She said. "Please?" Both Yakko and Wakko this time opened their eyes wide and gave the water guardian a puppy dog look. "Now that wouldn't be fair, would it? Besides...I don't exactly know what my fellow guardians plan on for their tests. Each one is different." The Warner brothers gave her a saddened look of disappointment. Unable to withstand them looking like that, she gave in and said, "The only thing I can tell you is that the earth guardian is a bully to girls. Avoid letting your sister show weakness. That may be his idea of a test. But, don't quote me on that." When she next looked at the brothers, they were dressed like reporters from the 50's and Yakko had a tape recorder in his hand aimed at her mouth like he had recorded everything she said. Wakko had a pad of paper and a pencil in his hand and was writing down notes. They both realized that she was watching them and changed their looks to sheepish and put away their recording utensils. "Yah, sure. No prob.!" Yakko said sheepishly. The guardian gave them a dirty look and then slightly chuckled. "Alright, you should probably get back to sleep. You'll need all of your strength tomorrow." She said. "Why, what are we doing tomorrow?" Wakko asked. "The same thing we do every night Pinky, try to take over the world!" Yakko retorted sarcastically, mimicking Brain's voice the best he could. The guardian chuckled once again and responded, "If you seek the queen, you must head to the Academy of Earth. That is where she was headed next." And with that, she slowly turned transparent and evaporated into mist. The brothers simply looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and made their way back to the tent where they slipped back into their sleeping bags and fell right to sleep.

Morning arose and we all had awakened from the light of the sun. We packed up the camp sight and figured out where to go from there. Yakko brought out the map and explained to the rest of the group that they heard from the water guardian that the queen was headed to the Academy of Earth. "So that is where we need to head next. I still wanna give her that piece of my pie!" Dot said kind of silly like. Yakko and the rest of us simply stared at her for a while. "You mean 'peace of your mind', right?" Dot tilted her head slightly to think about what she said. "I said 'pie', didn't I?" She sheepishly realized. "A little hungry?" Yakko retorted. Dot just gave a goofy grin to her older brother. Wakko then pulled out his magic fridge and every one pulled out food of their desire and we ate on the go.

It took most of the day to travel even half way back to the castle. We set up camp during the night and slept nearly peacefully, until a wind storm hit and nearly took the tent with its passing. We were almost about to crawl back to the castle we were so tired from that night. When we reached the castle, we simply made our way to our respective beds and fell asleep the moment our heads hit the pillows. Kinder dreams danced in my mind that night as I dreamed of the front yard of Mira's house. How it was mostly bright green grass and a few dandelions. Large flower beds in front of the house sitting on either side of the front door and working their way around the house's sides, all the way to the fence that divides the front yard from the back yard. I dreamed of me running around through the front yard, playfully being chased by Runt and Ace. The Warner siblings inside with Mira, teaching whatever it is she teaches them. Later they come out and we all go on another field trip.

Upon the rising of the sun, Yakko was the first to sit up in bed and stretch his arms. Looking around the room, he recalled the events of the past few weeks. Soon, Wakko arose from his slumber from on the nearby couch next. He slowly sat up on one side, turned onto his haunches and stretched out his arms. Still drowsy, he looked around the room to figure out where he even was. I arose from my sleep with Ace curled up beside me, who arose just moments after me. We yawned deeply to shake off our remaining sleep, stood up and stretched our front paws.

Dot arose from her sleep from our stirring. She apparently had slept on her right side, so she slowly pushed herself up onto her knees and turned around. She placed her hand in front of her eyes to block out the light until her eyes had adjusted. She then yawned, stretched and slid out of the bed. Each Warner made their way to what was referred to as a bathing room, cleaned up from their strenuous journey and made their way to the food court. Ace and I also made our way to the bathing room as well. I especially needed to clean up from the nightmares I've been having.

Afterwards, we all got together to figure out how long a journey we needed to travel to get to the Academy of Earth. Apparently, it was a half-a-day's journey southeast of the palace. We packed up our things, and began walking to the Academy of Earth. Dot looked back at the palace, feeling how empty and lonely it was and wondering if Queen Angelina had her reasons for this 'game' she had proposed. She was so lost in thought that she almost didn't hear Yakko yelling to her, "Hey Dot, hurry up or we'll leave ya here!" She snapped out of it and turned and ran to catch up to the rest of the group.

An exhausting seven hours later, we found ourselves at the front gates of the Academy of Earth. We first decided to rest for an hour and have a meal. "So, what do you think this guardian is like? The fire horse was hard to read and the mermaid was really nice, but she seemed kind of sad to me." Dot asked with her mouth full of chicken pie. (Cooked to perfection by Ace's magic.) "Well, the mermaid girl told us that he was a bit of a bully to girls. Just watch yourselves out there you two." "Don't worry about us." I responded. "We can take care of ourselves." "Oh, kay." Yakko said. Then we made our way to the academy doors. These doors were sealed shut, unlike the first two which were left wide open. Yakko and Wakko struggled to get the doors open. "Here, let me do it guys." Runt said to us. He had already backed up some distance away and waited for us to clear a path to the door. Runt then charged in as fast as he could and slammed head first into the large double doors. It may have knocked him silly, but he budged the doors inward about six inches.

A huge gust of wind then rushed inward into the academy. "This guy wouldn't even let air into his academy without his permission." I stated sarcastically. We then proceeded to push the heavy door in enough to let us slip through one at a time. The inside of the academy was designed just like the other two. The only difference was the details on the support beams, which were designed like the support beams in Greek ruins. In the Academy of Flame the supports had a flame-like design in them, the Academy of Water, the supports had a wave design on them, here they had moss growing on them and had the look of mountains carved into them.

In the arena was a giant minotaur-like creature lying on its side and snoring away. Yakko decided that it would be in our best interest to wake the beast-with-huge-muscles-and-horns rather than allow him to continue peacefully and search for the queen while he slept. "We could search for the queen and ignore the great-hulking-beast, but that wouldn't be funny then would it?" He said traversing up to the enormous creature's back. Tapping the minotaur in the spine he asked it, "Uh, excuse me, but we're looking for..." Suddenly the creature began to roll over onto its back and Yakko's ears dropped to the sides of his head just before the beast's giant shoulder landed on top of him. First Yakko struggled to pop his head out for a breath of fresh air... if he could catch any. "A little help here, please?" he begged short of breath and sounding as though he was being choked. Dot, Wakko, and Runt ran up to the minotaur to try their hand a pushing him off of Yakko. No such luck. It seemed like he weighed around 17 ½ tones and wasn't moving an inch. So, I decided to try my paw at getting the thing to move. I decided to jump onto the monster's side and climb up until I reached his nose and then give it a scratch. That'll wake him up. Or, at least I was going to until he began to giggle while I was around his kidney area. Change of plans, I went to work, shifting my paws up and down his ticklish spot until he sat up laughing so hard. When he did, Wakko and Dot dragged their brother out from under the creature and got him as far away as they could. Yakko was panting, trying to catch his breath. "That is not what I had in mind when I said 'funny'!" He said in slight frustration and relief at the same time.

Now fully awake, the guardian noticed me tickling him and plucked me off of him like plucking off a tick from a human's scalp. Pulling me up to his face he gave me an evil look like I looked appetizing to him. All I could do was give him that goofy grin the Warners give people when they are slightly embarrassed. Instead of eating me right away, he brought me closer to his face and sniffed me. He then turned his nose away from me and snorted, "Ech, eew! You are a female!" Then he simply tossed me back to my group of friends, right into Dot's stomach, to be precise. We both somehow ended up slightly embedded in a wall located behind us. Dot was somehow able to pull herself from the indent she made in the wall and cracked a joke before she collapsed onto her stomach. "I never knew I could make such an impression." She said.

"Hey, you can't do that to my sister!" Wakko said to the beast approximately 150 times his size. "Complete my test and you all can go. Then I have no reason to embarrass your sibling." The minotaur stated to Wakko. "Oh, kay. What do I do?" Wakko asked. The minotaur grinned and said, "Overpower me!" Wakko suddenly felt about a quarter of his miniature size as the minotaur stood up and moved over to little Wakko. "I'll even go easy on you by only using my left hand." It then added, placing its hand down in front of the tiny Warner. Wakko stood no taller than the creature's palm. Wakko placed both his hands against the minotaur's palm and when the creature said, "And...**Begin**", he started pushing against the creature's hand with all of his might. The minotaur stood there and said, "You are fairly strong little one," then suddenly pushed Wakko straight into the wall behind him. When the minotaur pulled his hand back, Wakko was embedded in the wall with stars circling around his head, mumbling some strange random song to himself. Finally, gravity took a hold of little Wakko and he collapsed to the ground. "But not strong enough." The creature then added.

"Eech!" Yakko exclaimed in slight disgust. "You are next little one." The minotaur said, pointing at Yakko. Gulping down his nervousness, Yakko pressed against the beast's hand just like his brother had done. And the same result occurred. Yakko was eventually shoved into the back wall right next to his little brother. He groggily began to sing to himself, "United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama..." then collapsed on the ground unconscious. "What about you?" He asked pointing at Runt. "No! It's my turn now!" Dot shouted. The minotaur was surprised to hear Dot speak up to him. "And what would a weak little girl do that her brothers could..." And with that, Dot brought out a mallet around the same diameter as his head and smashed it down on him, burring the creature half way into the ground and straightening out his horns in the process. When she brought the mallet back up she noticed that an indentation of the top of the minotaur's skull was imbedded in the head of the mallet. "As I said," The minotaur continued groggy and delirious sounding, "What can a weak little girl do that her brothers..." Dot brought the mallet down again. The minotaur was shoved another eight feet deeper into the ground. He was even more groggy and delirious, "What can a girl..." Down comes the mallet again, buried eight feet deeper into the ground and even more delirious and goofy sounding. "Oh, kay! Oh, kay!" He finally said, "You win!" And then the minotaur's top half (that wasn't buried in the ground) collapsed forward in a heap of what looked like dirt for his skin and moss covering his shoulders.

Two hours had passed and they were still treating our injuries. The minotaur had finally awoken from the trouncing he received from Dot. "I've never been bested by a girl before." He said. "Perhaps girls aren't as weak as I thought." Dot simply glared at him still angry at what he had done to her brothers and me. (She was also mad that he still sounded sexist.) Then he stopped and said, "The spell of wishes cannot be fund materially, but upon the last if he should fall, give heed to thy friends to break his wall." He looked around and finally bid us his farewell by saying, "I must leave you now. You will need your strength in the trials ahead." Then he shifted into huge clumps of dirt and moss and the pieces of him rolled and crawled away.


	12. Chapter 12  Fourth Academy: Air

**Chapter 12**** – Fourth Academy: Air**

We decided to rest up for the rest of the day to make sure our injuries began healing properly. While we sat there trying to bandage our injuries, Ace went out to try to teach Runt a few magic spells. However, that proved more entertaining than fruitful. Runt never got the words to a single spell right and it was kind of cute to see Ace get all riled up and flustered. "No dad, it's 'tes macrinomb' not 'took mar-in-comb'!", "No! TES MACRINOMB! Not tender marinade!", "No! Tes Macaroni...Dah! Now you've got me doing it." To name a few bits of the things he said to Runt. Runt was nearly hopeless when it came to casting spells. We might as well see what happens to those who hold on to their magic reserves for too long. However, none of us were willing to move at this point. It hurt too much.

The sun finally sank below the horizon and the moon began to rise into the sky. Ace gave up teaching Runt spells, even if Runt got the words right, he would forget to concentrate and end up standing there panting. Ace, instead, used his magic to help set up our camp site by putting up the tent and rolling out the sleeping bags of those too hurt to move at the time. (Which the Warners obviously faked half of the time.) Ace started a camp fire and then began healing our wounds. After a while we decided to kill time by reading a few of the books here in the academy. Ace cast the translation spell and we all went off and each grabbed a book that interested us. Dot came back with a book on basic beautifying techniques and spells, Yakko came back with a book that described the many kinds of jokes an gags using magic, I came back with a spell book that describes transformation spells, Ace and Runt came back with nothing, and Wakko came back with a basic cookbook of this world. We each read segments of our books and explained how they interested us until we began yawning. Once that happened, we decided to set the books aside and Get our rest.

That night I had another nightmare about Ace trying to protect me and failing. This time in the dream, we were in the arena of one of the academies. Ace was battling against a giant silver praying mantis. Ditching and dodging the mantis' claws and avoiding a barrage of fireball spells, Ace weaved his way close to the creature's face and unleashed his own lightning spell in the creature's eye. The spell detonated on contact and actually did some damage to the creature this time through. In desperation, the creature turned towards me and fired an enormous lightning bolt at me. Ace flew as fast as he could to try and save me from receiving the spells impact, but wasn't fast enough. Just as the lightning bolt was about to strike me down, I shot up out of my curled position and this time screamed at the top of my lungs, nearly startling the dead from their eternal sleep. "Rita, what's wrong?" Runt asked. "Are you oh kay?" Dot said worried. "Mom, what's going on?" Ace said with slight horror in his eyes. I couldn't deny it. I was beginning to get worn down by these nightmares. It also was pretty apparent that they had me slightly disturbed as well. Again I was drenched in my own perspiration and I couldn't hide the fact that I was out of breath as well. Nor could I blame it on heat, it was only 47º out.

I looked around at their faces and all I could see in each of them was strict worry. Their eyebrows raised and aimed inward, some of them even biting their lower lip slightly every now and then. Trying to catch my breath I tried to speak. "I'm alright," I squeaked out. My voice was dry and squeaky. It was all I could do to speak loud enough for the others to hear. I cleared my throat and continued, "I'm alright. It was just a bad dream." Was all I was able to say. Somehow, my voice was worn and dry. "I'll be better after I get some more sleep." I weakly said. Ace seemed extra worried at this point and insisted that he take his time trying to heal me...just in case.

After a good healing session, my voice began to return to me. It was then I noticed that the rays of the sun were climbing into the academy from the arena. It was time to pack up camp and get a move on back to the Silver Palace. We were on our way in an hour. We decided that it would be best if I traveled on Runt's back, and I actually didn't have any complaints. I actually was exceptionally tired from being bombarded with nightmares. We had made it half way back to the Silver Palace when a bright pink beam of light engulfed us and levitated us around 2 ½ feet off of the ground. We witnessed as our scenery changed from having the Silver Palace in front of us simply 3 hours away, to being ten minutes away from the gates of another academy. When the beam of light faded away completely in what seemed like forever (but actually was around 15 seconds), gravity kicked back in and we dropped back to the ground in a pile of Warners and quadrupeds.

After sitting up and rubbing the headaches out of our skulls, we assessed our situation. "Was that the 'Tes Macrinomb' spell?" I asked in slight shock. "Looks like Queen Angelina wants us here next." Dot stated. We all looked at Dot in slight amazement and confusion. "How do you know it was the queen?" Wakko asked his sister. "Elementary my dear Wakko." Dot exclaimed after quickly changing into a detective's uniform to put emphasis on the gag. "Her aura is pink." "So?" Wakko said even more confused than before. "What's my favorite color?" Dot then asked her brother to help make the answer to the riddle more obvious. "I don't know." Wakko said. Then he placed his right finger on his right temple to help him think about it. "Green?" He finally answered. Dot slapped her right hand on her forehead, just above her eyes. "I give up." She said in frustration. Wakko turned to Yakko for an answer. "Uuuuuhhhhhh. Try pink. That might be closer." He said. "Oh, thanks." Wakko started, then stopped to think about it some more. "I still don't get it." This time Yakko was slightly flustered. He leaned over to Runt, Ace, and I and whispered, "I think he's still suffering from 'middle-kid-syndrome'." I whispered back in response, "I think he's suffering from 'lack-of-intelligence'." Then we both simply stared at him with worry in our faces.

We decided to drop the subject and take the queens dare. We entered the academy and notice that there were carvings on the support beams that looked like an air current of some kind. "Lemmie guess," Yakko stated upon inspection, "The Academy of Air?" "Looks like it" Ace said in response. Suddenly, we felt a huge gust of wind blow past us and then turn back in and slam the doors shut. At the same time, the current of air sort of guided us to the arena where another gorgeous female figure hovered around six feet from the ground. She looked like a human sized fairy, with enormous pink and blue butterfly wings. She also was clothed in what seemed to be an outfit that was created from pink tulip pedals for her short top and knee-long skirt. She also sported bright pink hair that extended down to the end of her buttocks. She giggled coyly as she floated down to the ground as graceful as a swan, her butterfly wings flapping back and forth slowly. Upon closer inspection, her eye color was even pink but she used a kind of lavender eye shadow to bring them out. Somehow, it worked.

Again the two brothers stiffened their backs and sang, "Hellllooooo Nurse!" in unison. Then they zipped up to the wind guardian in a flash and stared at her with their tongues hanging out and panting like dogs. The guardian didn't seem put off by this like most girls seem to be. (She probably hasn't had a lot of visitors for a while, so who can blame her for wanting the attention.) Dot was close behind them with Wakko's gag-bag that she had somehow snatched from him during their trance. Dot placed the bag on the ground, opened up the bag's opening, and pulled out a mallet that was capable of smacking them both at the same time. And that's what she did, they straightened up like two-by-fours and she grabbed her brothers one by one and shoved them into the gag-bag. She then tied a knot in the bag's opening so they couldn't escape, flung the bag over her shoulder and, waved her hand at the wind guardian and said, "Boys!" to her and walked back over to Runt, Ace and I.

The wind guardian blushed at her recent actions to the seemingly flirtatious attention. And she spoke with a high feminine voice, "Sorry about all that, I haven't seen a living soul in years, so..." She was like a teenager the way she talked. "I suggest you get straight to the test." Dot scolded the fairy. The wind guardian sheepishly laughed and the brothers jumped out of one of the random books lying on the ground nearby. "Well, you need to try and capture the wind." She said. We all just stared at each other in slight confusion. "I don't know how to capture the wind, but I can think of ways to break it." Wakko blurted out. Every one (including the guardian) gave Wakko a pained look, until Yakko kissed his hand, waved at the wind guardian and said, "Goodnight everybody!"

After that little bit of discomfort, the guardian went to work, flapping her wings and creating huge gusts of wind hurling at us and lifting us high into the air. After a few minutes, it stopped, and we plunged to the ground below. After around 20 or 30 feet of falling and screaming, we were lifted around 10 or 20 feet and dropped again another 20 or 30 feet. It was pretty apparent that we needed to figure out how to capture the wind before we hit the ground. Well, around 200 or so feet to go. Wakko, first tried to catch the wind with a butterfly net, Dot, tried catching it with her hands, Yakko let himself simply get blown around while keeping his arms crossed, Runt butchered a variety of spells trying anything he could think of, Ace mimicked Yakko, and I though as fast as I could to do think of something before we went 'splat'. Time went by and we got closer and closer to the ground. Yakko and Ace were simply crossing their arms the whole way down until we reached around 60 feet till the ground. Yakko then asked Wakko for his gag-bag, reached in and pulled out a simple jar. Reached in again and pulled out the lid to the jar, lifted the jar above his head and allowed the air to enter the jar and quickly sealed the jar with the lid.

Rather than dropping us fast, the wind gently carried us down and we safely touched down. The guardian fluttered over to our group and said with glee, "You did it, you captured the wind! Let me see it!" Yakko, unable to resist another gag, aimed the jar's opening at the guardian and unscrewed the top. When the top came completely off, a gust of wind knocked the guardian off of her feet and pushed her around 40 feet backward. When she stopped skidding in reverse, she ended up with her hair as stiff as planks of wood and jetting backward. Her eyes were wide open and she seemed to be in slight shock. "Wow! That was some strong wind!" she exclaimed. She then cracked a smile that stretched from ear to ear and congratulated us on our success. "That wasn't exactly one of the hardest tests we had to endure, you know." Yakko said to her. It almost looked as if the guardian took that as an insult and was about to cry until she zipped in and gave Yakko a huge hug, conveniently placing his face in between her breasts. Almost immediately, Yakko literally melted into a puddle of black ink. "Whoa, there's a first." Dot stated sarcastically pointing her right thumb at her brother's remains. The guardian knelt down and stared at the black puddle kind of feeling guilty, thinking that she had killed him, until Yakko quickly regained his shape and gave her a huge smooch on the lips and dashed off. The guardian then stood up and watched as Yakko ran around the building as hyper as a 4-year-old on a jumbo sized pixy stick. She then noticed Wakko nearby, with his arms outstretched like he wanted a hug as well. The guardian giggled with glee and snatched up Wakko and squeezed him between her breasts like she was holding a teddy bear with its tongue sticking out and sporting the biggest smile on its face.

"Oh, please." Dot retorted. "Excuse me, miss wind guardian? I don't suppose you have any cryptic advice for us before we get on our way?" The guardian then snapped back to reality and blushed heavily and set Wakko down. "Sorry, yes I do. Oh, what was it? The spell of wishes cannot be found materially, so look not upon these mortal shelves. Look, instead, inside thy selves...There we go. That's it...I think." She then gave us the same goofy grin Yakko gives when he is embarrassed. "Whoa, dumber than advertised." Dot said under her breath pointing her thumb at the wind guardian. "Oh," the guardian then said as if she remembered something important, "The queen mentioned something about going next to the Academy of Thunder. I think you can find her there if you hurry." She then giggled as Yakko and Wakko coyly waved at her with the fingers on their left hands and grinning. She acted like a shy school girl and then faded away into the wind leaving our group. The two brothers looked sad for a while and then shrugged their shoulders at each other in slight confusion.

Yakko then brought out the world map and we figured that it would take us just shy of two days to arrive at the gates of the Academy of Thunder, so we decided to get a move on and hurry to try and catch up with the queen. We traveled until the moon was high up in the sky and the Warners' watches read 7:30 pm, since their cell phones had died three days after our initial arrival into this world. (Hey, no electrical outlets that fit earth-type adapters. Think about it.) We decided to set up our sleeping bags and not the tent this time, it was a warm night and there wasn't a cloud in sight.

That night I had another one of those nightmares. It began with a sky view of Burbank. The place was caught ablaze, buildings burning to the ground, people running in terror, and Ace battling against a giant silver jellyfish, ducking and dodging its tentacles, throwing various spells at it. Even though, the spells had made contact with the creature the only way you knew whether or not they inflicted any damage was listening to the beast screech in pain. Ace threw lightning bolts at the creature and it finally collapsed near the water tower and on top of one of the nearby buildings. Ace charged up a powerful spell to take the finishing blow until the creature took a sucker punch at him and knocked Ace out of the air with one of its tentacles. Temporarily paralyzed by the tentacle's poison, the creature was poised for the final strike. Fearing the fate of the little kitten, I ran up to see if I could help him, but the creature swiped me with one of its tentacles and I wound up paralyzed as well. I could feel the prickling of a thousand needles coarse through my body. It was then I quickly opened my eyes and woke up from the terrible dream.

When I awoke from the dream, I allowed my sight to adjust from my sleep and noticed that all of the others were hovering over me with a worried look on all of their faces. "Mom, are you sure you are ok?" Ace asked. "I'm just fine Ace, it was just..." I started to say until I noticed that my body wouldn't move. Somehow, the paralysis from the nightmare, was actually affecting me in the waking world as well. "What in the...I can't move." I stated in confusion and shock. Slightly panicked, Ace began to use a healing spell to try to cure any injury I may have sustained. However, it didn't do anything. My body was still paralyzed and there was not much we could do for now.


	13. Chapter 13  Fifth Academy: Electricity

**Chapter 13**** – Fifth Academy: Electricity**

Finally deciding to allow Runt to carry me until my paralysis wore off, we continued traveling to the next academy. We had camped one more day before I was able to at least lift my head. Whatever these nightmares were, they were serious business. Either that or they are getting so real, my brain can't tell the difference and even now believes that I am effected by the toxins...Nah! Anyway, it was only after we set down for the night did Wakko notice something in the distance, "Hey look guys, I think that's the Silver Palace." And sure enough it was. We had traveled all the way back to the castle and didn't even notice it was there, approximately an hour or two away. However, since we had already pitched our tent and set out our camping stuff, we decided it would be a good idea to camp out under the stars for one more night. Boy was that a mistake.

The weather turned bad faster than it does in Florida. The whole night it was beating down rain and windy as a storm. It got so bad, the Warners pulled out anvils to help keep the tent staked to the ground. Lightning crashed so often we were scared out of our wits, and it took us nearly forever to fall asleep. There was hardly any time to dream that night. Before we knew it, the sun rose in the horizon and we still were dead tired. There wasn't much for me to do. I was just beginning to be able to move my legs by that time. After traveling for another exhausting day, we finally reached our destination, the Academy of Thunder. Ditching the idea of entering on the get go and having to take the guardian's test while dead tired, we pitched tent early and nearly fell asleep in the dirt.

Around eight hours later, we arose like zombies, worn and exhausted. After a quick breakfast from the magic fridge, we were more energized for the trial ahead. We pushed the large arched doors open and entered the academy unaware of what lies ahead. In the distance where the arena was, we could see flashes of light bouncing everywhere. From side to side, up and down, diagonal, and every which way. As we approached closer, a bolt of lightning zinged by us, scaring us half to death. It zinged around some more for a while until it slammed in to the center of the arena and burst in brilliant flashes of light. Finally, the lightning stood up in a humanoid shape and shouted, "Heeeeeey Kids!" in a nasally high cracked voice. We simply stood there in sheer shock of fear. I think Wakko even "let himself go" as well. Yakko then leaned toward us and whispered, "Is this guy seriously the thunder guardian?" "Yes I am!" it responded mimicking a game show host's voice. "And the challenge for today's competitors iiiiiis..." suddenly there was the sound of a drum roll and he switched to a goofy child's voice, "Out prank me!" "Does this guy remind you of someone that scares the daylights out of you? He does me." Yakko retorted to his siblings. They simply nodded while staring at the being made of electricity.

"Ok, mister electric-personality, we'll take you on your challenge." Yakko finally answered. The thunder guardian then gave them a sinister grin and zipped off as a bolt of lightning. His voice rang in the air, "The entire academy is the field. Use it as you see fit." Then the Warners got to work and huddled together to discuss their prank. After a few minutes of listening to mumbling and watching Dot poke her head out of the huddle every once in a while and giggling, they scattered to set off their gags.

First was Dot, the guardian caught up to her in one of the libraries, climbed along the walls until he got within a certain distance, and unleashed his energy into some nearby books, seemingly bringing them to life. The books jumped off of the shelves and flapped their covers like they were bats and darted directly at Dot. Dot actually didn't even notice the books until one of them smacked her in the back of the head, sending the electric energy jolting through her body. She wound up like a burnt piece of toast. "No mama, I was a good girl today..." and fell backward to the ground. Landing on her back, nearly unconscious.

The guardian then made his way to Yakko and tried to sneak up on him to scare him silly. When he got close enough, Yakko spun around and sprayed the guardian with a spray bottle full of water. The result was rather...shocking. The guardian began to jolt, fizz and electrocute himself, jerking around in various shapes and intensities. Yakko simply glanced at us and flicked his eyebrows upward three times and simply walked away.

Dot finally woke up from her daze and slowly stood up only to nearly get knocked with one of those electrically charged books again. With a lump on the back of her head, she ducked and dodged the best she could, however two more books struck her and she received an electric shock both times. Charred to a crisp, she fell onto her back once again.

The guardian finally recovered from his own electrocution and charged after Yakko who walked out of a random classroom with a pair of large wires in his hands. "Ah, just who I was looking for." Yakko said to the guardian. "Could you hold these please?" he added handing the guardian the wires. The guardian stopped in his tracks and said, "Oh sure" thinking that Yakko had it hooked up to a power source and was just going to try to electrocute him. However it would simply provide the guardian with more power. Instead, nothing happened. Yakko simply walked over to the other end of the disconnected cords and pulled out a power box from behind his back. The guardian's smile turned to a frown and asked, "Is that rechargeable battery box..." "...Dead? Yah!" Yakko said, and then hooked the cords to the power container and supply box. The guardian could feel himself be pulled into the cords. Finally he was completely sucked through the cords and traveled all the way into the power box. When Yakko disconnected the power box it was apparent that the guardian was temporarily trapped. You could hear the guardian's voice echoing from inside the battery box say, "Well this didn't go the way I had planned." And with that, Yakko grabbed the power box and walked with it back into the center of the arena.

The books finally fizzled out fell to the ground and Dot was finally able to stand up, however charred and dizzy, and make her way back to the center to see how her brothers did. For some reason, Wakko never moved from his spot in the arena while his siblings went off to conduct their part of the contest. Yakko meticulously placed the power box in the center of the arena and clicked on the power switch, allowing the guardian to escape. Looking around confused and in shock he turned around to see the Warners grinning at him contently. Dot swaying back and forth from the three lumps on the back of her head. She was still disoriented from the shocks as well.

"We win." Yakko stated. The guardian gave the Warners a dirty look like he was going to accuse them of cheating. "Not yet. I still need one more thing from you." He said. "And that would be?" Yakko asked. "I need..." the guardian stated dramatically, "A rubber band!" he added calmly to make it sort of funny. Wakko pulled out his gag bag and pulled out a thick large rubber band and gave it to him. The guardian then placed the band against his fingers and pulled back the front part of it as far back as he could and snapped the band against Wakko's forehead. As the guardian was laughing uncontrollably, Wakko whipped out a large mallet and brought it down upon him, smashing him into a flat disk. "Oh kay, you win." The guardian exclaimed in a disoriented and squeaky voice.

A few hours went by while we waited for the guardian to regain consciousness. Ace treated Dot's injuries while we waited. Finally the thunder guardian woke up holding his head due to a headache. He turned around to see Wakko happily staring at him while sticking out his tongue. Jerking backward like he was genuinely afraid of Wakko. "Oh kay wise guy. I think you owe us some info." Yakko exclaimed. "Uh...yah. The spell of wishes cannot be found materially, but the last of the guardians may open the gate, if you look past your eyes and guide your fate." The guardian nervously said shifting his gaze back and forth from Yakko to Wakko. Acting like he thought Wakko was going to eat him or something. Wakko simply stood by with his tongue sticking out like always. "Oh kay. You may leave now! The little one is scaring me." "I'll show you scary! I didn't even get a chance to even **pull** my prank." Dot mumbled to herself while Ace was healing her wounds. "If you are looking for the queen, you might wanna try the Academy of Frost. That's where she said she was going." The guardian said then looked back at Wakko nervously and in great fear of him. "Well I gotta go. Lots of guardian stuff to." The guardian nervously laughed and vanished like turning off the light in a room.

Our group decided to rest for a few hours before heading back to the palace to get our bearings again. After returning to the palace, Yakko brought our group to the long dining table and spread the map out in front of him. "Ok, I see a pattern here gang. Somehow the queen is always remains a day ahead of us and always lets us know where she is going. Now there are only a few academies left and the guardian said that she was headed for the Academy of Frost next. If we take into account that she has been traveling to each of the academies in accordance to their opposite elements... I propose we travel..." and he placed his finger in the point where the map showed the Academy of Nature. "...here!" He then finished his sentence. "How is ice the opposite of wood?" Dot asked. Yakko simply shrugged his shoulders. "Just call it a hunch." He then said.

We decided to get to sleep early today, in order to get a head start in catching up with the queen. While Dot and I were lying in bed, she decided to ask me while staring at the ceiling, "Have you noticed that the challenges started getting easier as we progressed through the academies?" I yawned and thought about it. She was right. The challenges nearly killed us the first time. However, they have been getting progressively easier as we progressed to all of the different academies. "If that pattern holds true, the final test should be a cinch." I deduced. "I don't know." Dot said with worry in her voice. "I've got a bad feeling about the other challenges." After that I fell into slumber. Dot however, simply couldn't sleep she was worrying about that feeling in her gut. When she turned to me she found me stirring in my sleep. I was having one of those nightmares again. Ace was battling against a humanoid monster made of silver crystal. His body covered in crystal spikes and standing several hundred feet tall. Only this time, Ace was fighting in a room that resembled a dungeon or a sewer or even a tomb. All I know is that the room was enormous, there was a stream of clear water flowing through the very center of the room, there were large arched doorways on opposite sides of the room and along the other walls, there were rectangular holes that looked about the size of the drawers in a morgue, some of them even had mummified bodies placed in them with golden jewelry placed meticulously nest to the heads. The battle was fierce and long, Ace ducking, dodging, and attacking using spells. It was when Ace landed on the ground when the battle swung in the beast's favor. The creature unleashed a shock wave from its mouth that pinned Ace to the ground. And then the creature simply stomped on him as if I wasn't even there. When the creature lifted its foot off of him, Ace was both crushed and impaled by the creature's spikes. It then turned its attention to me and made a motion to stomp on me. I shot up at the shock and woke up again with Dot looking at me with genuine worry in her eyes. She made an effort to calm me down for a while. Once again I was drenched in my own perspiration from the nightmare. However I am happy to say that the dream did nothing to me, and my paralysis was completely worn off. After having a small drink of water, Dot brought me back to the bed and we both tried to go back to sleep.


	14. Chapter 14  Sixth Academy: Ice

**Chapter 14**** – Sixth Academy: Ice**

When we awoke the next morning, we found ourselves, not in the palace, but in the library of another one of the academies. "Not the 'tes macrinomb' spell again?" Dot whined. "When is this insanity gonna stop?" she then screamed at the top of her lungs. "Well, we might as well see what we need to accomplish here." Yakko stated with frustration in his voice. Then Yakko placed his hands on the door and immediately backed off and began shaking his hand like it was burned. "Yikes that's cold!" He exclaimed. Wakko and Dot went to feel the door as well. "It's freezing!" Dot said. "I think I might have just the thing." Wakko stated and then grabbed his gag-bag. He opened it up and jumped inside. The bag moved for a while as Wakko was fumbling around inside. When Wakko finally hopped out of the bag, he was wearing an Eskimo's outfit complete with fur mittens and coat. The others followed suit and they were able to withstand the cold temperatures of the doors as they pushed them open.

A flurry of cold wind and snow was all that greeted us at the door. The inside of the academy was like frozen tundra. Shelves and furniture were covered in snow, as well as snow covered the entire floor around ten inches thick. The walls looked frozen and it was definitely cold in there. "Uuuuhhhh, I don't think this is the Academy of Nature." Yakko deduced sarcastically. "I wonder if there is an 'Academy of Summer'." Wakko asked. As if you could hear the scratching of a record, every one stopped and simply stared at the small, bundled up Warner. Wakko looked around at the rest of the group and noticed that we were staring at him and he simply gestured to us and said, "What?" Yakko slapped his hand on his forehead and sighed.

Suddenly, a melodic inviting voice could be heard from inside the frozen academy. "I have awaited your arrival. Please enter, so we may speak face to face." It almost sounded like it was whispering gently as to make itself seem more inviting. "I have been awaiting the arrival of the Sage and his companions." The voice continued. "So, uuuuhhhhh, what should we do now?" Yakko asked the rest of us. "Since we're here, we might as well get this test over with." Dot stated and marched right in. The moment she had cleared the door's length, they swung closed and almost immediately swung back open. In that instance, Dot had simply vanished. We all gasped in slight shock then Yakko figured that she was simply playing a joke on us and walked in calling for her. "Dot, come on out we need to find the queen." The moment he finished his sentence, the doors swung shut and immediately swung back open, revealing that Yakko too had vanished into thin air.

I'll go in if you guys go in with me." Wakko said with worry and a smidgen of panic in his voice. We stayed as close together as we could while entering the academy. Ace and I on Runt's back and Wakko walking close to Runt's left side. When we entered far enough into the academy, the doors slammed shut and a dense fog enveloped us. The fog was so thick that we could barely see two inches in front of our faces. It was strange we walked through the fog for a time then, for some reason, runt stopped dead in his tracks. "Runt, what the matter? What are ya stopping for?" No answer. Suddenly the feeling of Runt's fur under my back paws vanished and was replaced by the feeling of sitting on a table. I took a look around after the transition of feeling and noticed that I was sitting on a table. "What the..." I exclaimed, in shock and confusion. What happened to Runt? Where did Ace go? I found myself alone in the cold, frozen academy. Even Wakko had disappeared. I had walked a short distance when I began to smell the scent of smoke rather than the cold bite of the fog. As a matter of fact, it was overall getting warmer. So warm that it began to feel like I was walking into a burning building.

When I finally got through the smoke, I noticed that it actually **was** a burning building. Mira's house as a matter of fact. Somehow, I was back on Earth and watching my new home burn to the ground. I instinctively rushed in to go and find out if Mira was still inside or not. My worst fears were realized when I arrived at the front door and saw Mira stuck under the collapsed door frame and bleeding from her head and having the left side of her blouse drenched in blood from another wound just under her ribcage. I was about to rush in to help save her until I heard Ace's voice from a distance calling me. "Mom, help!" He was yelling to me. As I turned around to look where his voice was coming from, I witnessed him pinned under the Zouriinkusu's right paw, claws extended.

I was just about to rush in to help him when Mira's voice called out to me. "Rita, help. I can't get free." I turned around and she was still in the burning building, trapped and scared. Each one then began calling to me. I shifted my gaze from one to the other watching in horror as with each second they both became in even more danger then the last. Confused and overwhelmed, I closed my eyes and screamed at the top of my lungs.

Yakko wandered around for a while lost and confused. Trying to figure out what the heck was even going on, he continued to walk until his face smacked into some kind of invisible wall. Still confused, Yakko figured that there probably wasn't anything else to see in that direction so he turned around to walk away, until he heard a faint thumping noise behind him. When he turned back around, Yakko watched as Dot was desperately pounding on the invisible wall and acting like she was screaming for Yakko's help. However, there was no sound what-so-ever that could be heard from beyond the invisible wall. Beyond Dot, Yakko witnessed as Wakko ran from a dark figure in the shadows, hurling anything he could from his gag-bag in that direction. A sense of déjà vu swept over him as he watched Wakko throw anything and everything he could at the dark silhouette. When it finally emerged from the darkness, Yakko recognized the silhouette's owner immediately. It was Coluv. "That's impossible!" Yakko exclaimed remembering that Dot had slain him whilst in her transformed state during the Blood Star Incident. Dot continued to pound on the invisible wall, panicking, screaming, and shedding tears in her fear. Wakko reached into his gag-bag and threw the largest anvil he had in there at Coluv. However, the tyrant simply used the Armageddon Blade to cut the anvil into a hundred pieces in less than ten seconds. Yakko watched helplessly as his brother and sister were panicking and doing everything to keep their distance from the genocidal psychopath.

Dot and Wakko were finally driven into a corner and Coluv slowly closing in for the kill. "No! Don't do it!" Yakko yelled, pounding on the glass as hard as he could. It seemed as if Coluv could hear the faint thudding of the invisible barrier, and turned around to see Yakko's face. Coluv simply gave Yakko that evil grin he always had when he wiped out creatures he deemed "unworthy to exist" in his new world. Coluv then turned back around and slowly continued walking toward Wakko and Dot. Wakko reached back into his gag-bag to find something else to throw at Coluv. However, when Wakko brought his hand back up, he was gripping the bag's insides and it simply turned inside out. Yakko realizing that his siblings were in desperate trouble, began to push against the invisible wall as hard as he could.

Coluv thrust the Armageddon Blade in through Wakko's inside-out gag-bag, narrowly cutting Wakko who dodged to the right. When he brought his sword back, Coluv grabbed the gag-bag's opening and pulled on it, slicing a large hole in the bag. He then tossed the bag into the air and swung his sword repeatedly, shredding the gag-bag entirely. Yakko, who was still pushing against the invisible wall desperately needed to help his siblings at this point. Even pushing with all of his might, he didn't seem to do anything to the unseen wall. Tears of frustration and panic began rolling down the boy's cheeks as hopelessness began to set in. "**What's going on?**" He screamed as he backed off, curled up his fist and slammed it against the invisible wall. "**Why is he here?**" He punched the wall another time. "**What am I supposed to do?**" This time when he punched the wall, first his hand began to throb and bleed. But at the same time, the invisible wall...cracked. Noticing this, Yakko quickly pulled out his mallet that he kept behind his back and smashed it against the crack in the invisible wall. Because of this, the crack expanded. He reared back and smacked the crack with the mallet again and this time, the crack expanded to all sides of the wall. He reared back again and swung the mallet as hard as he could into the crack and the wall shattered from the impact.

Surprised by the loud cracking noise, Coluv turned back toward Yakko only to see the mallet flying at his head. The impact knocked Coluv backward around seven feet, making him drop the Armageddon Blade. Yakko rushed in and picked up the sword and wielded it against the seemingly invincible tyrant. Yakko turned his gaze at the sword's transparent hilt and remembered what the crystal inside of it was capable of. Releasing the small lock on the bottom of the hilt, Yakko removed the red spherical gem and held it in his hand. Feeling it pulse similar to a heartbeat, it kind of freaked him out. However there was a strong urge in his head telling him to make Coluv feel what he felt when Yakko was stabbed by the psychopath during the Blood Star Incident. Yakko's mind was screaming for revenge, and Yakko began to grin at Coluv. Not that goofy grin he gives others when he's being coy or zany. It was the grin of blood lust and vengeance. While Coluv was recuperating from taking a mallet to the face, Yakko darted in close enough to touch the maniac. Taking the crimson marble in the first two fingers and thumb of his right hand, he shoved the crystal down the tyrant's throat.

Coluv swallowed the crystal with slight pain and was barely able to cough before Yakko started to bring the blade down upon him. Coluv rolled to the left to dodge Yakko's strike and the sword sparked as it sliced through the rubble underneath the insane Valkyrian. Yakko then came back at Coluv and the tyrant tried to dodge once again. However, the blade's tip caught Coluv's chest and blood began to drip down from the six inch long cut mark. Enraged, Yakko lunged at the evil alien and caught him by the shoulder as they both fell to the ground, Coluv on his back and Yakko pinning the Valkyrian to the ground. Yakko began to close the magic blade's gem in on the wound, but stopped inches away from pressing the scarlet stone on the sword's hilt into the wound. What stopped him was hearing his sister's horrified scream. He turned to look at his siblings and both Dot and Wakko seemed no longer afraid of Coluv, but of Yakko now. Settling down some, Yakko looked around and accessed the situation. Yakko had the upper hand in the fight, but began to realize that he was about to commit the very crime that created the Blood Star Incident in the first place. "Go ahead Yakko." Coluv taunted. "We're more alike than you think. Do it..." when Yakko looked back at the Valkyrian menace, he noticed that Coluv was wearing his face. "...and you'll be just like me." Coluv then finished. In fear, Yakko then stood up and began to step back with panic written on his face. He looked back at his siblings to see their panicked faces, and then looked back at the object in his hand, the demonic blade that was the root of their suffering.

"How would things be if this sword had not existed?" Yakko asked himself. He thought about it until his head began to hurt before he remembered me explaining something about the Valkyrie Star Sword being the one to **separate** Coluv from Vuloc in the first place. He began to hate the sword that helped his sister, he began to hate the Valkyrian race, he began to hate Vuloc, and he began to hate Ace. All the while, Coluv continued to taunt, "We are so much more alike, you and me. Things don't seem to make sense to either of us. We can't stand to be unable to understand, to not know what to say, to not know what to do." As Coluv spoke, Yakko began to hate thing more and more, making himself angrier and angrier. Images of the things he began to hate flashed through his mind. It was when an image of something Mira once referred to as a "family photo" flashed into his mind did he realize what he was beginning to hate. The photo was of the entire group, plus Mira. Yakko standing in the center of the photo with Mira placing her hands on his shoulders and leaning forward to close off as much space as she could between them. Dot was standing on Yakko's left side, holding ace in her crossed arms him hanging by his chest and simply grinning as big as he could. Runt was sitting at Yakko's feet staring forward, at the camera and panting with his tongue sticking out. Wakko stood on Yakko's right side with his arms open wide, as if he was posing grandly, and me standing on Wakko's shoulders, traveling behind his hat and neck as I always did. Upon closer inspection of the photo, each member looked genuinely happy to be where they were at that particular time.

A tear ran down Yakko's cheek when this image ran through his mind and he stopped hating things altogether. Coluv, still wearing Yakko's face was startled and confused. "What are you doing?" Yakko tilted his head back and realized that, without his recent experiences, his little "family" wouldn't be where it is today. "Here's where we're different." Yakko began to solemnly tell Coluv. "I'm not afraid." He then finished. Then without warning, Yakko made a mad dash for the opening in which he had entered from, and began to smash the Armageddon Blade flat sides against the walls of the cave they were in. "No! Don't" Coluv screamed and tried to tackle Yakko. Four more additional strikes against the icy stone walls of the cave and the blade shattered into a dozen pieces. The moment the blade shattered, Yakko's environment vanished from sight and he found himself in the center of the academy's arena. The structure's support beams donning snowflakes spiraling down left-to-right from top-to-bottom.

"Yakko!" Dot's voice came from behind him. Yakko turned around to see his brother and sister as well as Runt. Realizing that everything he saw was simply an illusion and everyone else probably had to go through similar experiences he asked them, "Where have you guys been?" "It was horrible! I was all alone and everything was destroyed." Dot said to her older brother rather dramatically. Yakko ignored his sister's drama and turned to his brother who simply said, "I was surrounded by **clowns**!" Both of them realizing what happens when Wakko's phobia confronts him, they simply felt sorry for the clowns. Yakko looked at Runt thinking that he too would share his story. "I don't wanna talk about it. Definitely, definitely don't wanna talk about it." Was his only response. A long awkward silence, then Yakko looked around and asked, "Where are Rita and Ace?"

Speaking of Ace, he found himself in an ice cave battling four humanoid ice monsters. They were tall and lanky, but since they were literally made from ice they were stiff and walked around like zombies stiff and imbalanced. And, just like zombies, every time you knock them down, they simply get back up and keep coming. After a short while of dodging these creepy frozen creatures, Ace's idea bulb clicked on. "Fire melts ice!" he said to himself. Then he simply started throwing fireball spells at them. The fireballs struck each of the ice creatures and almost immediately melted their top halves, and they collapsed to the ground. Rather than simply staying down like good little destroyed ice soldiers, they combined together and reshaped themselves to form a larger and stronger ice monster. Ace simply rolled his eyes in frustration. "Fine!" he sighed to himself. He then inhaled as deeply as he could, closed his eyes tightly and held his breath. After a few seconds of that, Aces body began to heat up like a furnace. Soon his body began to glow bright red with heat and the surrounding ice cave began to melt from the rising temperatures. Even the large ice monster quickly melted and when it was all completely finished, there was nothing left besides a massive puddle of water. When Ace could no longer hold his breath, he released it in an exhale that unleashed a ton of heated steam. The kitten floated in place for a short time until he let out a small burp. "Oops, excuse me." He said, pretty much, to himself as he looked around the room and noticed the rest of the group.

"Uncle Yakko, Uncle Wakko, Aunt Dot!" He exclaimed as he floated up to them. "Hi dad..." He then said to Runt. Ace looked around for a while and noticed that I wasn't around. "Where's mom?" He finally asked. "I can answer that." The melodic voice from before answered. They all turned to look in the center of the arena (which was where they were the whole time), and there stood the guardian of ice. A beautiful female humanoid with cold blue skin and donning a kind of a grayish-blue outfit that made her look similar to Egyptian royalty. A tiara made of ice rested on her ice blue hair and a large necklace with aquamarine gem stones embedded in it decorated her head and neck. Her blouse covered her shoulders and tapered down into a single point and opened back up going down revealing her naval and coming to a point around the base of where her back meets her buttocks. She wore a metal plate belt that was similar to the metal belt of Queen Angelina's. The belt had a reverse apron connected to the back that covered her buttocks and had a loin cloth that extended down to her knees, covering her front. She wore high heeled shoes that had strapped across her ankle. A strap that connected to the back of her shoe extended up to the back of her knee and had three straps connected to it evenly spaced traveling down her leg.

Again, she was considered drop-dead-gorgeous to the Warner brothers. They stiffened their backs, leaned forward and panted like dogs with hearts in their eyes. Then they howled in unison, "Helloooooooo Nurse!" and tried to run up to her and give her a kiss, but when they began moving their feet, they noticed that they weren't going anywhere. Looking down, they soon noticed that they were simply sliding around on a patch of ice. "I'm getting the strangest feeling of déjà vu." Yakko stated sarcastically. When he stopped moving, Yakko slid forward gradually. Wakko on the other hand, tried even harder to run along the ice and ended up slipping and falling flat on his face.

"You said you know where my mom went. I wanna know! Where is she?" Ace demanded. "She is right here." The guardian stated stepping to her right. Once she stepped aside, she revealed a large chunk of ice with me encased inside it. "Mom!" Ace exclaimed in slight horror at my condition. "What have you done to her?" "I tested you all to find the weakest link of your group. She was the only member of your group to fail the test. By weeding out her as a member of your group, I have thus made you overall stronger." The guardian of ice stated rather intelligently and coldly. "What does that mean?" Yakko interrupted. "It means that Rita will remain here forever, frozen as a warning to remind others to weed out their weaknesses." "I'm not leaving her here!" Ace yelled furiously. "Brute force won't do anything for you little sage." The guardian responded. She then thrust her arms forward. Ice began to rapidly form and extend in their direction and reached them in a matter of seconds. The ice continued to extend until it pushed them out of the academy. The ice abruptly shattered into ice dust just as the academy doors slammed shut, locking them out.

"That was far too easy." The ice guardian thought to herself. Suddenly a loud explosion shook the academy's very foundation and another one destroyed the doors and blew them right off of their hinges and the doors flew in and nearly dug themselves into the academy walls. When the smoke cleared, Ace was standing in the doorway in his sage mode and clearly furious with the guardian. "Looks like I underestimated you, young sage. But to acquire her, you'll need to be much more than just flashy." As she spoke, she slowly pulled her arms in front of her, crossing them in front of her face. She then thrust her arms back down to her sides and tilted her head backward to look up to the sky. As she did this, an ice skeleton of what resembled angel wings sprang from her back. The initial wings were of small size, each section around the same length from her elbow to her fingertips. The "feathers" were all sharp ice crystals that floated close to the wing-shapes, the four middle ones around her entire arm length from her shoulder to her wrist, one on the top of the wing around the size of her forearm, another one near the bottom of the wing that was the size of her forearm and the last one that actually was at the bottom of her wing that was nearly the same length as her leg. (And that was simply describing one wing.)

Utterly confused, the Warners and Runt simply stood by. Still furious with the ice guardian, Ace simply charged in, silvery-blue light shining brightly. Rather than charging in and fighting Ace directly, the ice guardian maintained her demeanor. The floating shards of ice (other than the largest ones closest to her sides) turned and aimed their sharpest ends toward the small kitten. Then almost immediately after shifting their aim, they shot off like arrows flying at high speeds directly towards Ace one right after the other, zooming at the little kitten rapidly like large ice bullets from a machine gun. Each time one of the floating shards was fired at Ace, a new one simply formed in its place almost instantly and fired again. It was a barrage of icicles aimed directly at the young cat. Ditching and dodging the best he could, Ace quickly avoided the deadly rain of ice. Being flustered with his current outcome, he began to use that heat-up spell that he used to defeat the ice monsters before, however with the barrage, it proved difficult to focus on the spell and dodge at the same time. Receiving a few grazes from three of the shards, Ace decided to teleport out of the line of fire before he continued the heat-up spell. He disappeared from the constant rain of sharp ice, and reappeared behind one of the support beams with snow flake carvings that were inside one of the academy's classrooms. He began to concentrate on the heat-up spell once again until the sound of the flying icicles turned and got closer in a hurry. Ace ducked down under one of the desks and narrowly was made into a Swiss cheese kitty when the shards punched through the thick stone wall like it was paper.

"She is obviously not gonna let me use any intense heat spells. How do I get close to her?" Suddenly the light bulb clicked on inside his tiny little head. He concentrated for a short time and mumbled the barrier spell to himself. A sphere of solidified energy surrounded the kitten and Ace then levitated himself quietly back through the classroom. When he reached an opening, he made a mad dash for the guardian. Surprised by his maneuver, she was barely able to turn herself to catch him back into the barrage before he slammed into her left side, knocking the ice-cold wind out of her. "Now, **free my mom**!" Ace demanded at the top of his lungs. "A lucky shot is all. I guarantee you will not get another." The ice guardian stated with the utmost confidence in her voice. She then reached back and touched her hands to the two largest ice shards that draped close to her sides and they reshaped themselves into English broadswords made of condensed ice, one in each hand. She then lunged at the small cat and swung the sword in her left hand at him. Ace backed off enough to avoid the blade as it ripped through his barrier shield like it was a marshmallow. Suffering the damage, the barrier dissolved back into the energy it had come from, leaving a dumbfounded Ace vulnerable for a strike from the next sword. Rather than the sword striking the small cat, suddenly the guardian stopped in her tracks, looking like she was struggling to even stand up straight. Grunting and struggling to even move, the guardian slowly turned her head to see little Wakko aiming his palms at her. "What is this?" she grunted, and then she collapsed to the ground as if she had a 2000 pound vest plus two 500 pound bracelets. Struggling to rise to her feet, the guardian asked the small boy with great frustration, "What did you do to me?" Rather than answering her, Wakko kept his gaze on her, intense and fearless, still aiming his palms at his target, the ice guardian.

An enormous amount of pressure began to run throughout her body, the fear of being crushed beginning to fill her mind, the guardian began to witness her hovering shards shatter as they struck the ground from the enormous gravitational pressure. "Gravity Cage?" she exclaimed to herself. "Where in the world did this boy find the book containing the 'Gravity Cage' spell?" Ace then began to form a fireball of enormous magnitude. The fireball itself was approximately twenty feet in diameter and nearly reached degrees of 230 Fahrenheit. With rage still in his eyes, Ace was just about to launch the fireball, the guardian wrought with fear. "A fire spell like that, would wipe me out of existence!" the ice guardian thought to herself. She was beginning to suffer from the intense heat already, her powers being derived from cold temperatures. She wouldn't be able to survive the attack, even if she was deemed to be immortal. Out of intense fear of her own destruction, she screamed out, "Alright, you win! I surrender!" However, with Ace still blinded by rage, the fireball was launched. As it closed in on the helpless guardian, she began to envision her own life flash before her eyes, until she witnessed Yakko place himself in the fireball's path between it and her. Spreading his arms out wide Yakko simply stared down the enormous ball of inferno.

Witnessing Yakko's sudden act of bravery, Ace snapped himself out of his blind rage and used another spell to quickly dissolve the ball of inferno flames. He then slowly floated down to ground level and turned his head away from the ice woman like he was ashamed. Wakko, as well, released his gravity spell from the ice guardian and lowered his head in shame, looking solemn and sad. "Why would you do this for me? I sent you away without one of your friends, planning on keeping her here forever. What makes this one so special to the sage?" The ice guardian asked Yakko who was still standing in front of her with his arms out stretched. Yakko didn't respond, instead he slowly toppled backward and fell to the ground unconscious and sun burnt. Dot ran up to her brother and looked over his burns. "I have no idea how to move him without touching his burns..." She stated expanding on the initial gag set up by Yakko. "I ask again, what makes the one you call Rita so special to the sage? Her capture simply caused him to try that much harder. No one has been able to defeat me in battle until now." Dot lowered her head and solemnly closed her eyes at the very mention of the question. "We don't usually place too much value on the sappy and corny stuff. But, he places the same value on all of us for one reason alone. We're his family." The ice guardian began to recall her family from ages ago, before she volunteered to be the guardian of the Academy of Frost. "I see. Then I wish not to separate your family. Rita may go with you. You have all passed my test." She said. "Why did you try to take her anyway?" Dot wondered. "My tests involve strengthening the sage and the companions he/she travels with. I guess I lost sight of where true strength comes from." The guardian responded solemnly and in deep thought.

Yakko had finally woken up from his brush with a flying incinerator and Ace began doing his thing healing the wounds of his "family". Still leery about the ice guardian, it took Dot a while to convince Ace that she was a good person at heart. I was finally released from my icy prison and Ace did everything he could to get me to stop sneezing. After a small bit of entertainment at watching my fur fuzz out at every sneeze and a few of Wakko's pranks, the guardian gave us her cryptic advice. "The spell of wishes cannot be found materially, however if you find yourself knocking on a silver door, repeat the phrase of the family lore. This is all I can say to you young adventurers. May fortune favor your final test." And with that, she dissolved into snow and scattered with the wind.


	15. Chapter 15  Seventh Academy: Nature

**Chapter 15**** – Seventh Academy: Nature**

"I'm starting to get the feeling that the only way we will actually locate the queen is to complete this 'game' of hers." Yakko deduced. "Every time we make an effort to either cut her off or confront her, we get teleported to the next academy on the list." Yakko was right, the Queen was determined to have us complete this game, and if that last test was any indication, the next tests will be even more difficult. "So, where to next?" Dot asked slightly worried. "Unfortunately, I think we need to go to where we were thinking of going when we were going to head the queen off. The Academy of Nature." Yakko answered slightly frustrated at the irony. "But according to the map, the Academy of Metal is closer." Wakko began to complain. "Well, this would be a good opportunity to have Ace get the hang of using the tes macrinomb spell... Uuuuuhhhhhh, or we could wait for Runt to figure it out." Yakko stated sarcastically. Every one simply turned their attention to the large dog, who was simply staring off into space and panting happily. We all spoke at the same time, sort of making our words incoherent. "I like the plan involving Ace better." Dot stated. "Ace, definitely Ace." I said in a slight panic. "I think it'd be better if I did it." Ace admitted. "I want Runt to do it." Wakko stated slightly late. We all simply turned and stared at him as if he was crazier than Coluv. Wakko just stood there sticking his tongue out toward the right.

An hour, and 247 attempts later, Dot made the decision to traverse back into the ice academy and locate the "red book". Around twenty minutes later, she reemerged from the frozen sanctum and carried with her a large book with a bright red hard cover. Putting drama into the situation for one of her jokes, Dot stated to Yakko, who ran up to her to greet her, "Please sir, I must deliver this package to the prince." She spoke with a British accent. "You should've taken your acting lessons more seriously you know. Maybe you would have some talent." Yakko retorted. Dot simply gave her brother an evil glare for that remark. She then straightened up and walked over to the little kitten. She then slammed the book down in the dirt near Ace's paws and sternly said to him, "Study!" Ace simply dropped his ears to the sides of his head and sank his neck down into his collar bone, giving her the "big eyes" look. Within another thirty minutes, the small kitten had figured out what was wrong with his spells. "So, what are **you** doing wrong?" Yakko stated trying to keep any possible blame off of his back. "I listened to my annoying uncle!" Ace responded trying to get Yakko to make his words sound gentler. "Listen, I know Wakko has problems, but let's not rub them in his face, alright?" Yakko retorted to Ace's comment. Ace simply dropped his head into the book in frustration. Hearing his name used in vain, Wakko perked up his head to make an attempt to figure out who was speaking... and failed miserably.

"So, what was wrong with your spell casting?" I decided to take over for Yakko, giving him my ultimate death glare. "This planet's magical energies are a lot more abundant, making spell casting much more sensitive. I need to focus better and imagine the situation more clearly." Ace explained. "Oh, is that all?" I responded extremely confused. "Just trust me." Ace stated slightly frustrated at my lack of understanding his words. "Ok! Let's give it a try!" Yakko stated with fake enthusiasm. "You guys need to picture the place we are going to as well, unless you want to become trapped in a wall or something." "Where's a post card when you need one?" Yakko stated after gulping with worry. After a few attempts at teleporting shorter distances (say around 60 feet), Ace began to teleport us farther distances (around up to the horizon). It was only a matter of minutes before we reached the Academy of Nature. Our group flashed in front of the large wooden doors and gently floated to the ground from our average arrival height of six inches off of the ground. Ace seemed to be worn out from using all of that magic in just a few minutes, so we decided to take a rest before we entered the academy and faced off with the guardian.

After taking a few hours to rest up and have something to eat from Wakko's magic fridge, we were finally ready to go in. By this time the sun was beginning to set in the distance. Despite the seemingly short amount of time we took teleporting here, we actually used up nearly the entire day. It was then the large doors of the academy, slowly creaked open. Behind those doors, stood another female guardian. This one had a light green tinge to her skin, almost as if it was made of aloe. Her hair was short, green and stood up in rows like it was grass. She had dark green eyes and wore dark eyeliner to help bring them out. She wore a red dress that resembled a cross between a rose and a tulip. A triangular opening in the dress exposed her naval and stomach. The dress ended in a short skirt that had four pedals for the skirt design. Attached to the dress was a pink cloth that extended down to her knees in the front and down to the middle of her shins in the back. To complete her outfit she wore high heeled boots of a darker shade of pink. On her wrists were gold bracelets and she donned a tattoo of a vine climbing from her wrist and wrapping around her arm up to her shoulder. Attached to the vine was a single red rose. Did I mention she also had a giant red flower bud growing out of her back? She approached us with a calm demeanor and a kind expression in her eyes.

The Warner brothers did their thing once again when they meet up with a pretty girl, and she was definitely pretty, if you're into nymphs and dryads. Their backs stiffened up and they began panting like dogs until she had gotten close enough to the group. Then they howled, "Heloooo Nymph!" in unison and rushed to jump into her awaiting arms. Dot simply looked at the rest of us, crossed her arms and complained, "How come there haven't been any guys around for **me** to do that?"Ace and I simply rolled our eyes in slight frustration. "Excuse me, but would you folks prefer to come inside the academy? It's going to rain tonight and I'm waiting for the new sage and his group of friends." The nymph lady said. When she spoke, her voice flowed beautifully and she sounded very wise. Yakko and Wakko stopped kissing her cheeks long enough to speak, "That would be us!" Yakko exclaimed. The guardian stopped and looked at our group like she was confused. "The sage is right over there." Wakko added, pointing at Ace. The guardian looked extremely confused now. She dropped Yakko and Wakko on their butts and took a couple steps backward. "I was imagining the sage to be an extremely attractive Valkyrian, like Vuloc." She said acting like a teenage girl with her first crush. "That is, if you like all of that hair." Dot interrupted her fantasy. "Hey," the guardian retorted, "It might be big, but that was all of the 'rage' on this world. You'd fall head over heels for him too if you met him." "I have." Dot stated solemnly, "He saved my life." The guardian suddenly stopped being snippy and jealous. She lowered her head in slight shame and offered us the shelter once again.

Inside, we at least now had a roof over our heads, as long as we didn't head to the academy's arena. Once inside, we quickly set out our sleeping bags and built a warm fire using Ace's magic. The first twenty minutes of camping with the guardian of nature was nothing but awkward silence until the guardian spoke. "I must apologize for my words earlier. I guess I was expecting something much different and wound up living in my fantasies for too long." She solemnly said with still some disappointment in her voice. "I kinda know how that feels." Dot responded. With the initial conversation becoming quite awkward for the boys, they decided to get up and search the academy for a while. The campfire flickering gently, yet wildly in front of our faces another two minutes of awkward silence, then the guardian spoke a single word, "Nymph." "What?" Dot responded slightly confused. "My name." the guardian informed the little Warner. "My name is Nymph." "Wait, the guardians all have names?" Dot stated confused and confounded. Hearing Dot say that tidbit of interesting information, the guys rushed back to listen for any of the guardians names that they could poke fun at. "Yes, we all have names. Each of us were once Valkyrians, you know." Nymph said. "So..." Dot started, "What is the flaming horse's name?" She asked. "Vulcan." Nymph responded after tilting her head to think about it for a little bit. "The mermaid?" Dot asked. "Stella." Nymph answered. "The minotaur?" Dot asked shuddering at the memory of his attitude. "Lance." Nymph answered slightly worried as to figuring out how he must have treated Dot and I. "The ice girl?" Dot asked next. "Angel." Nymph answered. "That's a bit messed up." Yakko retorted remembering what she had put him through. Looking at him slightly confused, Nymph then said, "The dude made of lightning... His name is Lou." "You mean Lou-ser, right." Yakko joked remembering his crazy antics, every one began rolling on the ground laughing. "Anyway," Nymph interrupted and included the evil stare, "the air guardian's name is Angela, and the metal guardian's name is Ron." "What's the final guardian's name?" Dot asked inquisitively. "That no one knows." Nymph answered.

It was beginning to get dark outside and indeed, just as Nymph said, there came a good sized storm. With the constant beating sound of the rain and the clashing of the thunder it was hard to get to sleep until, Nymph told us, "I can help you all get to sleep if you will permit me." "You had better have a gorgeous singing voice." Yakko stated sarcastically. Dot and Nymph both glared at him angrily, then Nymph sat up straight with her legs folded under her, tilted her head up slightly, closed her eyes, and folded her arms over her chest. Suddenly, the flower bud on her back bloomed and a light silvery-blue mist seeped out of it. The smell was calm and extremely relaxing. It swirled around her and enveloped us nearly completely. After breathing it in for a short while, we all began to grow extremely tired. Unable to resist, we all plopped our heads onto our pillows and fell into dreamland. "Now, little sage, my test for you begins." Nymph said under her breath and giving our entire group that gentle expression she naturally gives. "I am sorry for doing this, but I must see your dreams." She added, and then she sat back up straight, crossed her arms back over her chest and closed her eyes to concentrate.

The first dream she took a look at was Ace's dream. Entering it to confront him and possibly locate and find Vuloc, she passed through the veil that separates dreams from reality. When she had finally crossed into Ace's dream world, she simply found herself in a blank white space, void of any creations or objects. Looking around slightly confused and wondering if she had gotten lost somewhere while entering the dream realm, she finally noticed two figures a great distance away. She began to make her way to the two figures until one of them flashed right in front of her. It wasn't like teleporting. It was as if he simply appeared in front of her like watching a light bulb turn on from being off for a while. Gasping with a start, Nymph reared back and grabbed her heart as if she was afraid that it would jump out of her chest. The figure simply stood there and watched her stagger backward a few steps. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" Nymph said raising her voice. She was about to scold the figure some more until she finally got a good look at it. The figure who flashed in front of her and startled her was Vuloc.

Suddenly Nymph stiffened up and began acting like a teenage girl confronting her first crush. A large smile stretched across her face and pink hearts began beating in her eyes. She closed her hands into half-fists and brought them up to her face, resting her palms on her chin. Squealing with glee, she hardly realized that he was simply rolling his eyes. "Are you going to test us, or are you going to continue to crush on me all night?" Vuloc stated rather sternly. Nymph snapped back to reality when she realized that he said "us" and not "me". "Uh... 'us'?" She repeated. From behind Vuloc's leg trotted Ace, the little blue kitten with the light blue star mark on his forehead. Confused, Nymph pointed at the little kitten and stated, "You? How is that possible? I thought you were Vuloc in another form." "That is quite true." Answered Vuloc. "But, at the same time, it isn't true." He then added. Now Nymph was even more confused. "What do you mean by that, my sage?" She asked. Vuloc turned toward the small kitten and said to the guardian, "I am not the sage anymore. He is. I had used the forbidden 'spell of second life' and received its punishment. A new soul was born and mine was locked away for a time. As the children conquered the guardians, my bonds began to loosen until, I was able to get free and speak to my new soul." Remembering the harsh consequences the original sage had placed on the "forbidden spells" she finally began to understand just what had happened. "So, dear 'guardian of nature', what is your test?" Vuloc asked. Nymph simply dropped her head in sorrow and said, "I'll be back for you two. First I need to see the others' dreams." And she shifted from the sage's dream world to Wakko's.

In Wakko's dream world, there wasn't a whole lot too it, unless you consider the enormous mountains of food a whole lot. "I'm not even gonna stick around for this." Nymph stated with frustration and annoyance. She decided to shift to Yakko's dream world which was filled with pretty girls and movie reels of all of their old cartoons. "This is just sad." She stated and shifted to Runt's dream world. She entered a large back yard where Runt was playing with a dream image of Ace and the Warners. He was simply being himself and running around. "Figures, he is a dog." Nymph stated and shifted into Dot's dream world. "You said that you had met Vuloc before, what were you talking about?" She mumbled to herself and waved her arms in front of herself. There appeared a pink book that had a photo of Dot on the front and was decorated with a variety of flowers. "This is cute." Nymph stated while turning the book around to get a better look at it. She opened up the book and flipped through the pages until the scenery around her changed to the scenes of the "Blood Star Incident". Stopping to watch the whole thing through from start to finish through Dot's eyes, Nymph at last understood what she meant by "saved her life".

Shifting over to my dream world now she began to shift through my memories. My book was grey and slightly tattered as well as it looked like it was cleaned up and taken care of recently. The first thing she flipped through was the scene when Runt had gotten mauled by the wild dogs in Eugene, Oregon. She witnessed as Vuloc, with his cloak covering his body and face tossed the wild dogs aside and eventually chased them off. She watched as he hovered over Runt's lifeless body and cast the spell of second life on him and transformed into the small kitten, Ace. Shedding a tear, she searched forward for any indication that it could have been anyone else. She found the memories of me reading Vuloc's sage's journal and finally confirmed that it was Vuloc who became the small kitten. Wishing that she still had the bliss of her ignorance, the guardian began to cry silently to herself, until the scene suddenly changed to a dark sky, full of ahs and smoke. The guardian tried to make an attempt to shift back to the sage's dream realm, but somehow she wasn't able to do it. And she witnessed my entire nightmare. This time the giant silver figure was merely blurred out, however I still could see that it was a giant quadruped animal. The body shape was even similar to a cat's or a dog's. Ace began to fight the creature all by himself. Somehow or other the Warners were knocked down for the count and Runt was completely buried under a pile of rubble and debris. Ace and I were the only ones conscious. The giant creature swiped at the small kitten with his large paws and Ace barely dodged each strike. Throwing a variety of different spells at the blurry creature, Ace made his attempt to deal damage to it. However, the spells merely dissipated the closer they got to the creature, as if it was negating Ace's spells without uttering a single word. Realizing what was going on, Nymph simply whispered under her breath, "No", unable to avert her gaze from the battle. She then witnessed as Ace was promptly obliterated by an enormous ball of energy that struck the ground right on top of me.

We both gasped as she broke free from her trance, and I woke up from my dream. Everyone else was startled awake as we both let out shrieks from fear. Everyone gathered around us as we tried catching our breath. "I saw..." Nymph started, "I saw your dream!" she then concluded her sentence. Slightly confused and still panting to catch my breath, all I could say was, "Huh?" The both of us were drenched in perspiration and nearly panicking from what we had seen. "I entered into your subconscious to learn what you had learned, and when you had your nightmare, some unknown force trapped my inside. That is some powerful magic to manipulate others dreams and trap me inside someone else's subconscious." Nymph explained. And what were you doing in our subconsciouses?" Yakko asked slightly annoyed. "That was my test." She admitted. "I enter your subconscious minds and search for any indications of evil desires." "So, uuuuuuuhhhhh, did we pass?" Yakko asked sarcastically. "The only evil I've seen was the evil manipulating your dreams." She said to me. Still panting I asked, "Am I gonna have this dream again tonight?" "Fortunately," Nymph replied, "Spells like that can only be used once every twenty four hours." She then leaned back to calm down a little bit and gave us her cryptic advice, "The spell of wishes cannot be found materially, but don't give up hope you are nearly there. The final test lies in the center of the star." "That helps a lot." Yakko stated sarcastically. "Just work with it." Nymph retorted. "It's still late and we **all **should get some more rest. And with that, she opened her flower up again and put us to sleep with its aroma. Rather than entering our subconscious minds again, she lied down on her right side and fell asleep close to our group.


	16. Chapter 16  Final Academy: Metal

**Chapter 16**** – Eighth Academy: Metal**

When we awoke the next morning, Nymph was there to greet us. We packed our things, had a delicious meal from Wakko's magic fridge, and started on our way to the last academy. Before we left, Nymph said to us, "I'm not really supposed to tell you anything about the final test, but the creature you face is merciless and powerful. He has earned the nickname 'The Diamond Beast' and is nothing to take lightly. He even commands us guardian from time to time. That is all I can say to you. I wish you luck. And Ace," he looked at her with wonder and curiosity in his eyes. "You are lucky to have such friends with you, even **if** some of them are slightly nutty." She looked over at the Warners when she said that and there they were, Dot grabbing a hold of her ears and spinning her head like some kind of kid's toy, Wakko removing his head and beating Yakko's with it. Then they straightened up and gave us that goofy grin with halos appearing over their heads. Ace turned back to the guardian and said, "I know, thanks." We then all imagined us standing in front of the gates of the Silver Palace and Ace used the "tes macrinomb" spell to teleport us there. As we left, a large shadow loomed over Nymph. When she turned around to confront what made the shadow, she stopped in her tracks and doom painted itself on her face just as the shadow crashed over her and vanished into the ground, letting her horrified scream echo through the empty fields.

We reappeared at the front gates of the Silver Palace. "It looks like we've gotten the hang of using the tes macrinomb spell in masses." Dot pointed out. "Yah, even Runt might be able to cast a spell on his own now." I said sarcastically. Runt gasped with realization, "Ya think so Rita? Oh, that would be great, definitely, definitely great!" I just rolled my eyes in annoyance. "Now we gotta teleport our way to the Academy of Metal. Then our final stop, uuuuhhhhhhhhh," Yakko held that one for nearly an entire minute before he answered. "I have no idea." He ended his sentence. "Maybe we should review the cryptic messages all of the guardians gave us." Dot stated. "I'll translate!" Yakko stated with sarcasm. This time it was Dot's turn to roll her eyes at her brother. "Number one: When six are as one, the spell will be revealed." Dot recalled. "I think that one is about us." Yakko stated, "You know six of us and eight guardians, one of them even taught us a little about being a family." "Number two: When all is lost and you have no more to give, find the strength that lies deep within." Dot said. "I think that has something to do with the same thing you did to become Queen Angelina temporarily." Yakko responded. "Ok, number three: Upon the last if he should fall, give heed to thy friends to break this wall." Dot recalled. "Oh great, we have to knock down a wall. Let's make sure we have our mallets up-to-date." Yakko stated sarcastically. Dot gave her brother a dirty look. "Number four: Look not upon these mortal shelves, look instead inside thy selves." Dot recalled as she remembered the ditzy air guardian. "Uuuuuuhhhhh, probably a hint to the location of the spell itself. Remember all of the guardians tell us that 'the spell of wishes cannot be found materially'." Yakko reminded everyone. "Ok, Number five: the last guardian may open the gate if you look past your eyes and guide your fate." Dot stated. "I got nothing." Yakko said. "Some help you are." Dot retorted. "Number six: If you find yourself knocking on a silver door, repeat the phrase of the family lore." Dot said. "If you find a silver door, grab an ocarina and play this song." Yakko said then whipped out a blue ocarina from the hammerspace behind his back and played the Legend of Zelda's song of time. "How do you know that song anyway?" Dot asked slightly confused and annoyed. Yakko simply grinned at her. "And finally: Don't give up hope, you're almost there. The final test is in the center of the star." Dot recalled. She looked at her brother who was simply shaking his head with confusion. "Nothing?" the girl asked. "Nothing." Yakko responded in disappointment. He was disappointed in himself for not being able to figure out two of them. "So, what do we do?" Wakko asked slightly worried. "We go the last academy and get the last bit of cryptic advice from the metal guardian." Yakko explained.

We teleported just like we did when we were tracking down the Academy of Nature and in approximately three hours, we arrived at the front doors of the Academy of Metal. How did we know? The doors were made out of oxidized steel, they were hard to open and we could see a four story tall iron suit of armor statue standing in the center of the arena from hundreds of yards away. As we marveled at the giant statue from outside of the academy, Yakko said to us, "How much you wanna bet that that is the metal guardian?" "You know what would be really funny?" Dot asked. "What?" Wakko said to her. "If there was a smaller creature than me inside that thing and it was merely a mechanized suit of armor or something." She answered. "That would be just cliché." Yakko retorted. "Although, I get the feeling that we are going to have a lot of fun with this one." If the giant metal suit of armor in the middle of the academy had sweat glands, we would see him really sweat by now. However, it simply stood there like it was a simple giant statue or something.

"First things first," Yakko stated, "We need to find a way around those rusty metal doors." Some loud noises could be heard from around the giant metal statue as if there was rusted metal trying to move. It was pretty obvious that the Warners were getting on the guardian's nerves, however he remained still as...well...a statue. It took almost everything we had to simply pry those rusted doors open. Wakko tried to take a crack at it by himself and struck the doors with one of his many mallets. It was pretty amusing, rather than the doors swinging open in a flash, like he was used to, the doors barely budged and Wakko found himself vibrating like a tuning fork a couple of feet in reverse. When he finished vibrating he simply collapsed on his butt and wobbled his head around like a bobble head. Apparently, that knocked him for a loop a little bit.

Yakko and Runt made an effort to push the doors open with their shoulders. By the time they ran out of steam, their shoulders were extremely sore. "Lemmie try something." Dot said then she backed up so that she was in the giant statue's view and opened her eyes wide and gave it her "cute" face. "Pweeze let us in mister guardian. We promise to be good." There was no response from the statue. Dot took that as resistance so she went into an even cuter look and pulled out a lollipop. "Pweezy-squeezy?" she then said to the iron suit of armor. Still nothing from it, so she grabbed Ace and motioned for him to give it the cute look along side of her and she begged again, "Pweezy-squeezy-weezy-peezy?" Finally, the doors began to open by themselves as if they were being pulled and shifted by an invisible force. Dot let Ace jump to the ground and we hurried inside the academy as Dot stated, "Works every time."

The academy was the exact same design as all of the other ones. However it was almost completely built out of metal rather than wood and stone. Even the support pillars, which are usually made of stone and have elemental designs carved in them, were plain and made completely of metal. The books in the library rested on metal shelves. The only wood in the entire building were the lunch tables the classroom desks and chairs. It structure was old as well. All of the building was oxidized and beginning to rust away. It was pretty apparent that the only thing holding the building up was the guardian's power. We made our way to the arena to confront the guardian and the moment we entered, we were face-to-face with its foot. This thing being larger than the minotaur guardian, we decided that it was going to take some effort to figure out how to get around this thing. That was until the tip of a giant sword crashed into the ground behind us. "Uuuuhhhhhh, I think it's a combat test." Yakko blurted out. "Ya **think**?" We all responded in unison. Yakko simply gave us that goofy grin until the guardian began dragging his sword tip around in the dirt in our direction. "**Scatter**!" Ace yelled to our group, then he entered sage mode and flew up to the guardian to tackle him in the face. Ace's attempt was abruptly blocked by the suit of armor's enormous shield. (Yes, a shield.) The small kitten was temporarily knocked silly by the impact to his head and began plummeting to the ground.

Still dragging the sword tip around in the direction of the closest member of our team, we looked like a bunch of chickens with our heads cut off, simply running around randomly. Dot, had escaped into the actual academy and tried to find a way to make it to the second level classrooms. When she did, she found herself staring at a segment of the guardian's loin cloth. "That'll wake ya up in the morning." She stated sarcastically. "Good night everybody!" Yakko yelled to her as he sprinted by, trying to avoid the giant sword. Dot then tried to think quickly to find a way to get to the top floor. Suddenly she slapped her forehead as she remembered, "I still have my spell." She looked around and saw Ace trying to make another attempt at the guardian's head. The little Warner placed her first finger and her middle together, put her lips around them, inhaled deeply, and whistled to the kitten as loudly as she could. Hearing Dot's whistle, Ace screeched to a halt, turned toward her and zoomed up to the Warner girl. Dot quickly whispered her plan into the kitten's ear and Ace gave a big grin, indicating that he was going to enjoy her plan.

Ace dashed back at the guardian and threw a couple fireballs at it. The guardian pulled his shield up to block the fireballs but failed to notice the kitten speeding up and swerving around the shield. With a loud "**klong**", Ace smashed head-long into the guardian's head and knocked the helmet right off and knocked himself silly once again. Ace somehow was able to maintain his levitation spell and simply floated away as if he was in outer space. Now was Dot's turn, she mentally quoted the words for the levitation spell she and Ace had studied in the magic space nearly a year ago and imagined herself as light as a feather. She began to lift in the air and hover for a short period. When she opened her eyes she just had to comment, "And to think, when I reach mid-teens, I'll be constantly thinking I'm **over**weight." Then she focused on her objective and quickly flew in the direction of the guardian's shoulders. Avoiding the shield and the arm with the sword in it, she maneuvered up to the guardian and landed on its shoulder. Peering in, all she could see was a deep hole with light pouring in from slits in the armor's boots and grieves. "Oh this is too easy." She stated just before she jumped into the giant suit of armor.

"Aah, what are you doing? Get out of there. That's just weird!" the guardian suddenly began freaking out as little Dot dove into the dark abyss of his armor. He began dancing around for a while and the rest of us not only had to avoid the giant guardian feet, but his falling sword and shield as well. We decided that it was safer in the rusty library than out here with a polka dancing suit of armor. Suddenly he stopped moving around as simply was trying to use his arms to reach in and pull the little girl out of him. The slits in his leg began lighting up one by one moving down like an elevator. When it reached the bottom there was the small sound of a bell and then the lights traveled back up the leg. The same thing happened on the other leg and this time the guardian had noticed the strange occurrences in his lower appendages. A short time later, Dot climbed out of the armor and sat on the rim of its neck. "So, what did ya find in there?" Wakko called to his sister. "Two malls and a **candy store**! Come on!" She said as she gestured to her brothers to join her up there. She was just about to jump back in to go play around again when the guardian grabbed her by the waist with his fore finger and thumb, and flung her away as he placed his helmet back on his shoulders. Half way through her flight, Dot opened up a parachute from the hammerspace behind her back and floated down safely. The guardian simply watched, dumbfounded.

As the little Warner floated gently to the ground, the guardian said, "Don't **ever** do that again!" He stopped for a short while and then continued on by saying, "The spell of wishes cannot be found materially, but the one you seek is in the depths, of a castle where dead kings weep. Find the sword of shadow and light, and discover what makes the world so right. The guardian you face is the last you see. A wish to make for you, not me." "So...we won?" Yakko asked slightly confused. "Yes." The guardian stated with frustration. "But, how did we win? I thought this was a combat test." Wakko asked even more confused than his brother. "You made me laugh." The guardian answered seriously. Yakko leaned toward his brother and said under his breath, "I never heard him laugh. Did you?" Wakko simply shrugged his shoulders. Not wanting to upset a giant suit of armor, they simply grinned at him.

"The last trial awaits you now. You may camp here if you wish, I will not disturb you." Suddenly, the suit of armor sat down and began to fall apart piece by piece. When the entire thing had collapsed to the ground, a humanoid figure emerged from the clouds of dust. When the dust settled our group could see the true shape of the guardian. It was a Valkyrian, much like Vuloc. However, he had a bronze colored military hair cut and was wearing bronze samurai armor. It was Dot's turn to go gaga over a guardian now and she stiffened up, hearts began beating in her eyes and she howled, "Helloooooo Nurse!" She then rushed up to him and gave him a big smooch on the lips. Yakko simply turned to me and stated, "Girls, go fig." The guardian chuckled slightly and gently put Dot down on the ground. "If you were the guardian the whole time, then what was with the suit of armor?" Yakko asked. "I was hoping you would underestimate me and think me as slow." He responded. "We're not battle oriented." Yakko informed the guardian. "We just wanna give the queen a piece of our minds for putting us up to this in the first place." "The queen should be figuring out the location of the final test by now. I'll see if I can locate the clues she left behind for you." The guardian answered. He walked through the class rooms looking for something until he made his way into the third classroom, out of sight from our group. It was there he heard a frightening growling sound. When he turned around, he was overtaken by the same shadow that took Nymph. We could hear his horrified cry from where we were at and rushed to see what had happened.

When we got there, the only thing left of him was one of his wrist gauntlets. The room was completely trashed and there were the remnants of a shredded map. Yakko picked up one of the shreds and looked at it. It appeared like a piece that displayed location of the Academy of Frost. The difference was that there were two lines coming off of it. One heading southwest and one headed south-southwest. "Wait a minute." Yakko exclaimed. Then he pulled out our map and placed the shred in its proper location. "Why didn't I see this before?" He then asked himself. The rest of us were searching the room for other signs of where the metal guardian might have gone, so we didn't even notice Yakko piecing together the clue left behind by whatever did this. Taking out a pen from his own pocket and a ruler from the hammerspace behind his back, he traced the line from the Academy of Frost to the Academy of Thunder. Then the line from the Academy of Frost to the Academy of Earth. Removing the piece and completing the connections, Yakko began to see what the queen wanted to tell them. He then traced lines from the Academy of Thunder to the Academy of Wind and down to the Academy of Earth. He then traced lines connecting the Academies of Thunder and Earth to all the rest of the academies, eventually drawing the shape of the mark on Ace's forehead. And smack-dab in the center of the star mark's shape stood the Silver Palace. "**I know where the final test is**!" Yakko shouted. The rest of the group flocked around him to see what he had discovered. Things started to become clear as we gazed at the connect-the-dots Yakko had made. "The Silver Palace?" Dot gasped. "Kind of cliché, but it makes sense." I said. "Hey, that's the mark on my head." Ace stated. "I'm still completely confused." Wakko said in all seriousness. We turned our attention to the poor lost Warner and Yakko shifted the map over to Wakko, pointed at the lines he had made and said, "The final test is in the center of the star." Wakko carefully examined the map and said, "Oh, thanks."


	17. Chapter 17  The Diamond Beast

**Chapter 17**** – The Diamond Beast**

Dot went back and picked up the guardian's gauntlet and attached it to her arm. It was so big, it simply slid right off. So she placed it in her hammerspace. We all decided to make camp for the night and have a meal from the magic fridge before teleporting back to the Silver Palace. During that time, Dot seemed distracted by something and began going through some of the spell books in the library. She found some remarkable techniques for combat, like a technique that blocks your opponent's magic flow and keeps them from casting spells for as long as you can hold out. However, it seemed like an advanced technique and when Dot read about it she needed to look through more and more books to simply understand what the technique was about. It took her the rest of the day to finally understand the whole technique and she decided that it might be wise for Ace to understand it as well. She soon discovered that other spells can be implanted into basic spells called, Spell Techniques and that they had various effects depending on the basic element used in the spell and what pressure point was used.

They spent the next four hours studying and practicing the technique of nullifying an enemy's magic power. By then it was night time and they had exhausted themselves. However Dot still was on edge about something. I decided to see what was the matter was before we went to sleep. I carefully crept up behind her and watched what she did from here on. I found her simply continuing on looking through random books in the library. "What's going on Dot?" I finally asked. She nearly jumped out of her skin. "Don't do that." She scolded me in a whisper as to not awaken the others. "I actually don't know, something is nagging the back of my mind but I can't seem to figure out what it is." She explained. "Trying to find out more about the 'Diamond Beast'?" I said to her. "Maybe." She responded. As she reached up the shelf to pull out another book, a leather bound book slid off of the shelf along with it and landed square on the top of her head. "Ow!" She exclaimed while rubbing her head and lifted her leg back to attempt to kick the book. She stopped when she noticed the symbol on the front cover. It was the same star mark as on Ace's head. A six pointed star with three points pointing upward, two points out toward the sides, and a single point aimed downward. Instead of kicking the book Dot knelt down and picked up the mysterious book. "Now **this **is cliché." She then said showing me the book. "The answer to the nagging feeling in the back of my head **hits** me in the head." She then opened up the book and began reading. Apparently, it was a copy of the first Sage's Journal.

"We came from the stars of other worlds, we who are nameless and abandoned. We do not know how life for us came to be, but we exist all the same." It was the same first entry in this journal as in the journal that was destroyed when the magic space collapsed. Dot continued reading and found that the entries grew darker and darker as the years pressed on. After discovering the balance of the planet and becoming the first sage, he began teaching others about their magical potential. "One day I discovered a spell of limitless potential, and limitless power. Unable to cast the spell myself, I asked eight of my closest friends to help me seal the power away until I found the means of casting this great spell and having my greatest desire made real. For my people to transcend themselves and become 'keepers of the stars'. That is my wish. We erected a castle made of silver around it and devised a series of locks and seals to keep anyone from discovering this spell and using it for darker purposes. Each of my friends meditated for six weeks and eventually bonded with a single element of this planet. Fire, water, earth, air, electricity, ice, wood, and metal. Each transformed from the acquisition of their power, I gathered my power together and created a transcendence of all of them. Yet, I still was unable to acquire the spell of wishes. My body began to transform from the power I had acquired. Oh, how I wish my people could transcend. No, I wish **I** could transcend, I **will** transcend. I will become a GOD, and the people will bow before me. If not they will be **destroyed**." Dot stopped reading as she started to put together all that she had discovered. She then continued on to read how Verion tried to manipulate the next sage and ended up sealed in the lowest depths of the planet, how he was discovered by an eight-year-old Vuloc and how he forced his will upon the weak Coluv.

Dot violently closed the book, breathing heavily and in a state of near panic. "Does this mean that this Verion-guy is still alive?" She asked in confusion. "What's the date on the first entry?" I asked her. Dot re-opened the book to the first page and looked at it. "Over four thousand years ago." She said in complete shock. Her eyes were wide with the fear of her findings and she was dumbfounded at the mere thought of living for so long. She closed the book and went back to the group to tell them what she had found. I followed.

Random thoughts and questions ran through my head as we made our way back to the camp fire. Thoughts about those dreams I was given while my mind was being invaded and questions as to how can anything live so long. Other thoughts included, why would anything influence anything to destroy an entire race of people? What made Verion go crazy like that? Why does everything point to the star on Ace's forehead? What is the Diamond Beast? Where are Verion's eight friends? What did they all become when they gained their power? Suddenly answers started coming to me. "Eight friends...eight academies...**eight guardians**!" I thought out loud. "So Verion's friends became the guardians of the academies. So then where is Verion?" Dot asked. I just looked at her with a puzzled expression. The book said that Verion was sealed away by the second sage.

We reached the rest of the group only to find out that they were already asleep. Fatigue had suddenly overtaken us as well, and our findings can wait until the morning. I'd expected to have the same dream I got when the mysterious force manipulated my dreams. However, the only thing I dreamt about that night was blurry and hard to completely make out. In fact it looked like I was peering through extremely choppy water. The image looked that of a black and light blue figure jumping and dodging a larger silver figure's attacks. Along the whole thing I could see around seven or eight other blurry figures almost painted against the far wall, each mainly a different color and all looked vaguely familiar in a way. I tried to listen in on what was happening, but even the sound was all garbled and inaudible. All I could make out was, "Come...ik...inku...Ve...die...st..." and the rest was nothing but garble and static. The dream soon went black and that was the time that I awoke from my sleep.

It was now morning and as we all put away our camping things Yakko said, "Boy did I have a strange one last night." "A 'strange' what?" Wakko asked. "Dream. Uuuuhhhhhh, it was more like looking through water." Recalling my dream to be like that, I asked, "With a black and blue figure fighting against a large silver figure?" Yakko looked at me like I had read his mind or something. "And with eight other blurry figures in the background?" Dot asked finishing the scenario. "This is creepy. Definitely, definitely creepy." Runt said with worry in his voice. "I'll say." I said, "How do we all end up having the same dream?" "Would this adventure stop with all of the clichés?" Dot screamed at the top of her lungs. "I don't think it can here you Aunt Dot. Maybe if you scream a little louder..." Ace said in all seriousness. Dot simply gave Ace the dirty look she gives him when he says something stupid. Ace just dropped his ears to the sides of his head and sank his head to his collar bone. "Sorry, Aunt Dot." He said solemnly.

We finally packed all of our camping gear and put it away in Wakko's gag-bag, and Dot said, "Before we leave, can I borrow Runt for a bit?" "I don't see why not..." I said. Dot then took Runt away for around a few hours and when they came back Dot had a maroon colored book in her hand. It looked like a spell book. "So, what spell did she teach you?" I asked. "It's a secret. Definitely, definitely a secret. Can't tell." Runt responded. Dot placed the book aside and joined the group as well. "I hope you taught Runt a good spell. Or at least something he could understand." Yakko stated sarcastically. "Me too." Dot responded with slight worry in her voice. Yakko simply slapped his forehead. "Let's get going or the queen will get the spell of wishes before we can chew her out." He then stated. And with that, we gathered around Ace and he used tes macrinomb to teleport us to the gates of the Silver Palace.

The strange thing about arriving at the palace was when we arrived there, the doors were left open and there was a crimson cloud hanging over the top spire. "I ask for something original and what do I get? Another cliché!" Dot complained. "Just be glad there isn't anything cuter than you in there." I retorted. Dot just gave me an evil glare and I gave her a coy grin back. We made our way inside the palace. The inside was damaged and ransacked as if there was a struggle in the hallway. Vases were smashed to pieces, the flowers that Queen Angelina carefully arranged were crushed and scattered all over the floor as well as the water from the vases was splashed everywhere. Doors were knocked down and destroyed, stair railings were smashed into splinters and there were giant claw marks gauging along the walls and floor every now and then. "It looks like the Zouriinkusu got into a tangle with something big." Yakko stated. "Maybe it's Verion." Dot stated. "Who?" Yakko stated slightly confused. Dot recounted the information she had learned from the sage's journal found at the academy last night. "So, uuuuuhhhhhhh, you think Verion escaped and got into a tangle with the Zouriinkusu." Yakko guessed. "It could be." Dot stated. Suddenly, loud banging noises could be heard from under our feet.

Making our way through the carnage and ruin, we eventually found an underground tunnel. The tunnel was alit with magic torches that were designed to never burn out and never go out. The stairs we climbed went down quite a distance and when it finally ended, there was a hallway around the size of a football field. At the end of the hallway we came face-to-face with a large silver doorway with no handles. It kind of reminded me of the doors of the academies. "What do we do now?" Dot asked Yakko. Yakko placed his thumb on his chin and thought about it for a while, recalling the messages of the guardians. "If you find yourself knocking on a silver door, repeat the phrase of the family lore. Might as well give it a try." Then he pulled out his ocarina from his gag before and played the song of time from the Legend of Zelda games. At the entrance of the hallway from the staircase a large blue block with a sun symbol on it fell from the ceiling and struck the ground with a 'thud'. "That works?" Yakko asked looking at his ocarina in shock. "Enough with the jokes." Dot said. Yakko simply grinned and put the ocarina away. The block simply faded away like it was merely an illusion.

I thought to myself for a while and started to ask myself out loud, "What was it that the guardians said to us at the beginning of all of their cryptic advice? The spell of wishes cannot be found maternally?" "No, no. It's 'the spell of wishes cannot be found materially'." Wakko corrected. Suddenly the large silver doors began swinging inward, opening by themselves, just like at the Academy of Metal. "I don't know about you but that works for me." Yakko said with excitement. We made our way into the room behind the giant silver doors, which was the size of two football fields in length and width. On the other end of the room was a large arch entry way and down the center of the entire length of the room was a small waterway around a few feet wide. The side walls of the room had rectangle holes in it that were around three feet wide and one and a half feet tall. Each of the holes were spaced around three feet apart continuing from one end of the room to the other, and stacked three feet on top of each other. Rather than silver the whole room was a pure white color. By simply looking at the holes in the walls, you could tell what they were...tombs. Quite a few of the holes had mummified bodies resting inside them and most of them even had golden crowns sitting next to them.

"These must be the kings of Valkyria." Dot deduced upon entry of the empty room. "Where dead kings weep?" Yakko repeated a part of the message from the metal guardian. "The final test must be just beyond this tomb." I stated. However, before we could get moving, loud crashing noises could be heard in the distance beyond what our eyes could see. Then, suddenly, Queen Angelina flew in as if she was thrown with tremendous strength and skidded off of the water in the stream in the center of the room, and then landed on the marble floor with enough impact to break chunks of the floor up and scatter them around. She then skidded to a stop at our Yakko's feet, bleeding from her mouth and forehead. We gathered around the injured queen to see if there was anything we could do to help. We found that she also had a broken arm and bruises throughout the majority of her body, her back had definite scratch marks and she had broken four of the knuckles in her right hand. "You...guys came." She muttered. "Were we supposed to?" Wakko asked semi-dumbly. "You got...my message after all?" She said ignoring Wakko's comment. Suddenly, the meaning of the dream we all had last night made sense. She was fighting Verion and sent a subconscious SOS to us. The reality is I have gotten used to the fact that these people had a spell for everything. "That was **you**?" I asked shocked.

"The queen had engaged in a fierce battle with the final guardian." A deep and wise voice said from behind us and in the direction that the queen had been flung from. "Apparently, she had lost and now needs to be healed." It was the Zouriinkusu that was talking to us. I asked myself what he was doing down here and tried to come up with a logical answer. However, nothing I thought of made any sense at all. When the queen looked at the giant elephant lynx, her eyes widened with fear. Ace, trying to be the brave one, said to them, "You stay here and heal the queen's injuries. I'll deal with Verion." And then burst into his sage mode and attempted to dash off to save the day. However, before he even left the ground, Queen Angelina shouted to him, "No, don't go! The Zouriinkusu **is** Verion!" After she was finished shouting, she grabbed at her right side in pain.

Ace, stopped in his tracks and we all turned our gaze to the giant lynx in complete shock. "What?" We all shouted in unison. The Zouriinkusu then lowered his head and closed his eyes with relief and began laughing sinisterly. At first the laugh started off as a low chuckle. Then is started getting louder and louder, until it wounded up as a menacing laugh used in many cliché bad guy scenes. When he was finished laughing he took a deep breath and then a deep sigh. "How dare you even **attempt** to take **my** spell away from me? Only the truly powerful may use the spell of wishes, and I am merely steps away from finally fulfilling my destiny." "Again with the cliché's?" Dot complained. "This scene may be cliché small one, but..." And Verion let out a deafening roar that blew both Dot and I backward, out of the tomb and beyond the silver doors. "The ending will be mine alone. Without your spells, there is no way you can even hope to defeat me little sage. And your friends wasted their only chance to assist you in my defeat playing my little game." As he said that Verion looked up at the ceiling. At first there was nothing there, and then eight pillars of light revealed the eight guardians, suspended in air and positioned as if they were shackled to a dungeon wall. Each looked beaten and battered.

"I actually have to thank you, young sage." Verion said turning to the small blue kitten. "Thank me? Why?" Ace asked with anger and confusion mixed. "Actually, I must thank both you **and** the queen. If she wasn't so naive to invite you to in the unsealing of the spell of wishes, I wouldn't have been able to convince you to travel to the academies and unseal my original powers by overcoming the guardians' trials." The giant silver cat boasted. "So then you tricked her because she most likely knew her counterpart the best. Considering that the two of them were **one being **at one point." Yakko deduced. "So, uuuuuhhhhhh, what did you need us for? Couldn't you unlock the seals yourself?" he then mocked. "Insolent little whelp. Only those who were touched by the sage can unlock the seal created by the sage Merion, so many years ago." Verion answered. "And it was pretty obvious that my old friends weren't going to allow me to take the tests, they assisted Merion in sealing me away." He turned and shouted to the guardians.

"You were obsessed with the spell of wishes. We agreed to help you acquire it when your wish was about helping the people. But during the time of the second sage, all you could think about was adding to your power." Nymph screamed at Verion. He simply strolled up to her and gazed into her eyes. "You were always too outspoken." He said to her. Suddenly his eyes lit up with a bright gold light, Nymph suddenly felt as if her stomach was going to be ripped out of her body and keeled forward, writhing in pain. We witnessed as her body began changing, her skin turned from the color of aloe to the white color of normal Valkyrian skin. The flower bud on her back began to darken and wilt until each pedal lifelessly fell to the ground. Her dark green eyes turned brown and her outfit shifted from the rose looking dress and hanging cloth to a similar outfit to the dead Valkyrian girl I saw near the beginning of our adventure. When her transformation was complete, Verion blinked, stepped away from her and she simply fell to the ground in a heaped mess. Nymph was still alive, but she seemed too weak to even lift herself up off of the cold marble floor. She began struggling to lift herself up off of the ground with her arms and turned her attention to Verion. "What did you do to me?" she asked in a panic. "A little trick I developed while I was imprisoned in the 'Tomb of the Dark Ones'." Verion said. Then he went on to explain, "Every creature on Valkyria is born with a certain energy that can connect with the elements of planets. It is what allows us to use what you call 'magic'. By connecting with the energies of the planet, we are able to manipulate the various elements it holds. I simply expanded my horizons and learned to manipulate and even assimilate the energies of other living beings. In other words dear Nymph..." Verion raised his giant right paw and extended his claws to take a killing stroke on the helpless girl. "I've taken your guardian powers." Before his claws could touch the weakened Valkyrian, a silvery blue light enveloped her and she vanished from his sight.


	18. Chapter 18  The Spell of Wishes

**Chapter 18**** – The Spell of Wishes**

"It looks like you've become quite adept at utilizing the tes macrinomb spell." Verion said to the small sage. Ace simply glared at the crazy feline creature angrily and kept his guard up. Rather than keeping his attention on Ace, Verion shifted his focus toward me. "So, how is the fatigue level, my dear? I thought you would have abandoned the journey by now with all of the premonitions I've sent you." "Premonitions?" I asked the crazed beast. "Oh, yes, my predictions of how this fight will end. No matter how you look at it, your little **hero** cannot defeat me. In the end all of you will either bow before me or **die**." "And I suppose this is the part where we face off against you and say that 'we'll never bow to you'? After that there will be an epic battle at which you will lose big time and we will emerge the victors." Dot stated super tired of all of the cliché's.

"You think of this as one of your little skits back on earth?" Verion roared to the small Warner walking back into the room. "I hate to bring you such bad news, but there is no script. And I'll make **deadly** sure none of you come out of this room **alive**." He lifted his gaze up at the silver doors of the entrance and, without uttering a single word, commanded them shut. And that is what they did. The doors swung toward each other and slammed shut, shaking the entire castle for a few seconds. Realizing that their lives were actually in real danger now, Dot simply turned and gave Verion a sheepish, bashful grin and reached behind her back for a mallet to hit him with. However, before she could even grab hold of her hammer, the elephant sized lynx teleported in front of her, and swiped at her with his enormous right paw, claws extended. Batting Dot with more paw than claw, the girl was flung into the leftmost wall from the entrance and was buried into the marble upon impact. Rather than feeling dizzy, cracking a joke and then flopping onto the ground, Dot simply hung by her arms from inside the impression of her image in the wall and hung her head, unconscious and bleeding from her mouth and the left side of her forehead. "Wait a minute. That doesn't make sense. We're toons and until now nothing like that has ever happened. What gives? Where are our toon abilities?" Yakko demanded. Verion simply turned to him and snidely responded, "Allow me to explain, this room is the "Tomb of the Kings. With all of the royal bodies here, their magic essence creates a kind of field that cancels out anything that would cause someone to even be remotely immortal. In other words, you still have your hammer space, but now I can harm and even kill you."

Wakko, reacting to the injuries of his little sister, actually was able to pull out his own mallet and swung it at the creature. Instead of simply smashing the creature or breaking at the handle, the mallet shattered like a piece of crystal colliding with the ground from being dropped. Feeling the intense sting in his hands from the mallet's vibration backlash, Wakko opened up his hands and found his gloves shredded on the inside of his fingers and palms, his hands reddening. Verion quickly turned around to take a swipe at the Warner child while he was distracted, but Yakko dove in just in time to snatch his brother out of harm's way. After rolling out of the line of fire, Yakko asked his little brother, "Wakko, are you alright?" Wakko simply cringed and said, "My hands, I can't feel my hands anymore." Yakko, realizing that there probably was more damage done than what he could see, turned to try his hand at facing the giant silver lynx only to see red flames leaking out of the creature's bared teeth. Verion opened his mouth and spat a huge fireball at the helpless brothers. At that point Yakko was faced with the decision of running away alone and leaving his brother to receive the brunt of the fireball's force, or try to take his brother with him and hope for the best.

Yakko quickly lifted his brother onto his back and ran away from the enormous flaming ball. He was barely out of range when the spell struck ground. The resulting explosion launched both him and Wakko across the room and they splashed right into the stream. When Yakko pushed himself up he was able to see just what was beyond the tomb. It was a white marble room that was no bigger than 50 feet long by 50 feet wide by 50 feet tall. Carved into the center of the back wall was an image of the six pointed star. Underneath the carving was a stone alter with a sword rack that had no sword. Realizing that his little brother was still face first in the water, Yakko quickly grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted his face out of the water. Wakko coughed to clear his lungs and gasp for air. As he moved his arms, Yakko suddenly felt a twinge of pain in his left shoulder blade and reached around to grab his injured spot thinking that he had merely pulled his shoulder muscle. Instead, he felt the absence of skin and an abundance of heat rising from the wound. The flash of the fireball had burned his shoulder to a second degree burn almost instantaneously. Feeling the agony of his burn Yakko made use of his other arm to pull his brother to dry land. As he did so, he noticed that Wakko was gripping his right arm in the same kind of agony as he did with his hands. Yakko looked over his brother and noticed that his little brother's arm was limp and hanging down farther than usual. Apparently Wakko had dislocated his shoulder upon impact with the bottom of the stream canal.

"Are you finished?" Verion asked our group with a cocky tone to his voice. For some reason, Ace simply floated in mid air, stunned by what he just saw. He created all of this destruction, and hasn't even entered his sage mode yet. Angry that Verion was hurting his family and scared because he realized that Verion was also a sage and knew that the beast had much more power buried inside him, Ace entered into a conflict with himself about what he should do. He watched as the beast simply waltzed over to the earth guardian, said to him, "You shouldn't have been so soft", and stole his powers. Ace watched as the guardian shrank down to the size and shape of Dr. Ragnarok, and fell to the ground too weak to even pull his body into sitting position. Rather than taking the final stroke and killing the poor Valkyrian, Verion moved on to the wind guardian. "You my dear were always too stupid to give anyone a decent challenge." He said with hurt and cruelty in his voice. As he drained her power, her hair turned from pink to cherry red, her wings shriveled up and fell off, and her outfit turned into a combination of a sea-blue Japanese school uniform and the dress that was worn by the dead girl I saw in the ghost town. She then dropped to the ground and struggled to lift herself up just like the others. As Verion left her lying there, she began to sob heavily, tears streaming from her eyes, down her cheeks and rapidly dripping onto the marble floor.

Seeing the girl's tears like that, Ace finally snapped. His aura intensified brighter than when he was facing off against Ragnarok, and the kitten charged right at the large beast. In his head he began communicating with Vuloc. "He's not gonna stop, is he?" Ace asked floating in the yellowy-white space in his mind. "It doesn't appear like he wants to listen. His need for power somehow turned into a lust for power. Even **if** he obtains the spell of wishes, it won't be enough for him." Vuloc answered. "I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to borrow your power again." Ace solemnly said to the Valkyrian sage. Vuloc simply looked at Ace with kindness and determination in his eyes. "What do you mean, 'again'? All you have done from the beginning was all your power." Ace looked confused, so Vuloc said, "You have more power inside you then you ever dreamed of. However, in this case, I agree. We should combine our strength. From now on, my power is yours."

Ace struck the Zouriinkusu in the back and drove it into the ground before he could steal the powers of another guardian. The kitten backed off from the damage to the floor and witnessed as Verion simply stood up and stepped out of the crater in the floor unharmed. When Ace spoke this time both his and Vuloc's voice came out of his mouth. "That's impossible!" the kitten exclaimed. Verion simply shook off any debris lying on his body and chuckled a little bit. "Confused? There is a reason why they nicknamed me 'the diamond beast' you know. I can harden my fur and skin to that of a diamond during the moment anyone attacks me." As he gloated, he failed to notice Runt sprinting up from behind him. Runt lunged in from the left side jabbed his left front paw into Verion's ribcage near his heart and muttered something to himself. Several bolts of lightning erupted from Runt's paw and surged throughout Verion's body. It however didn't do much damage at the time and Verion simply slapped the dog aside like swatting at a slow insect.

Ace watching his father fly off and crash into a stone wall and have a dead king flop on top of his injured body got back into the fight and sped directly for the giant cat's head. Verion grinned thinking that all he has to do is harden his skin and fur and the fight would be over. His grin quickly turned into a look of worry as he realized that nothing was happening and his skin and fur never hardened as the small kitten slammed right into his head and drove him into the marble floor. Again Ace backed off and waited for Verion to rise. The large lynx slowly stood up groaning with a headache and confused as to why his spell failed. "What...what did you do to me?" He demanded. Runt was unconscious and was unable to answer. Verion turned toward the still conscious Warner brothers. "What has he done to me?" he demanded. "He used a basic lightning spell." Dot grunted out. Everyone's attention turned to the little girl still hanging on the wall by her own impression. She was barely regaining consciousness, but still was able to grin coyly at Verion and glare at him with her right eye since her left eye had her blood running over its lid. "How can a simple lightning spell stop me from using the spell that..." Verion cut himself off when he realized what Runt had done to him. "A spell technique?" He stated in his realization. Dot painfully chuckled slightly and answered with, "The technique that permanently blocks the next spell the caster tries to use." Realizing that he no longer could use his hardening spell, Verion fell into blind rage. He turned to the rest of the guardians and absorbed their powers all at the same time. Each guardian turned into a Valkyrian of their respective forms. The water guardian turned into a woman wearing a sea blue long dress, the electric guardian turned into a scrawny sixteen-year-old Valkyrian boy, the ice guardian turned into a Valkyrian wearing a business looking suit, the fire guardian turned into a man with flaming red hair and a heavy build, and the metal guardian traded his samurai armor for a simple tank top and khakis. Each of them struggled to hold themselves up after flopping onto the marble floor.

Upon draining the last of the guardian's power, Veion himself, began to transform. His silver fur began to turn a deep charcoal gray, bronze horns sprouted from the crown of his head, bone spikes grew out of his elbows and along the vertebra of his spine, and his eyes began to glow a deep gold color. "The **power**!" he exclaimed like it made him feel rested and refreshed. He opened his mouth and a powerful golden beam of light erupted from it. He moved his head, following the stream canal from one end to the other. The beam of light disintegrated the marble floor and Yakko barely got himself and his brother out of the way before the beam reached them both. Witnessing the raw destructive power Verion had obtained, the two brothers sat up against the arch frame in pure shock. Ace tried to come in once again to slam the giant beast on the head once again when Verion turned his attention back to the little sage. Firing the golden beam once again Verion sought to obliterate the kitten. Ace reacted to the new scenario and stopped in his tracks and erected his strongest shield moments before the beam engulfed him and began to push him back. Eventually, Ace could no longer hold his position and slammed into the back wall. When Verion called off his attack, Ace dropped to the ground and his barrier shattered like glass upon impact with the ground.

Barely able to move now Ace was unable to do anything against Verion's next attack. The dark beast grinning at the battered up little kitten, he took great evil joy in exacting his final strike. He once again opened his mouth and fired the golden beam at Ace. I have no idea how I did what I did next, but I sprinted as fast as I could and placed myself in between Ace and the golden beam of destructive force. "I won't let you hurt my son!" I yelled. I wanted to grab Ace and try to get out of there and escape, however my body wasn't responding and I simply stood there ready to do what little I could to protect him. All eyes were on the two of us as the beam drew in closer and closer. Moments before the beam struck I could see a flash of white light before my eyes and I thought to myself that it was over. I was dead. I closed my eyes to await any judgment from whatever deity I was headed to. Apparently, I'll have to wait a little longer. When I opened my eyes, I noticed that I was still in the white room with Verion, the guardians and all of my other friends. I was still alive somehow and there was a shining white barrier protecting me. I turned to look behind me and saw Ace in his sage mode, but something was off about it. His aura was a brilliant pure white and shining so bright he looked like a star. His fur was glowing silvery blue and his star mark and eyes were glowing the same color as his aura.

"The spell of wishes..." Dot started groggily, "Is a wishing star!" Yakko finished in awe. Ace floated in the air and closed his eyes. When he did this, all of us, Queen Angelina, Runt, Dot, Yakko, Wakko, the guardians and I began to glow from the inside of our bodies. When the glowing faded away, we all had our strength back and our wounds were healed. Verion roared as loud as he could and screamed, "How is this possible? This is inconceivable! The spell of wishes is mine!" He then stopped and said, "Fine, I'll just steal it the way I stole the guardian's powers." Instead, Ace simply vanished from sight, like he was teleporting but with no light to accompany it. He reappeared above the giant mutated cat and plummeted himself downward and into the small of his back, plowing him into the ground. Verion let out a loud pained yell as he realized that he had been attacked from above. Ace then, backed away from him and allowed Verion to get back to his feet. Enraged, the giant black cat rose to all four of his feet and fired the golden beam at the tiny kitten. Rather than enveloping him, Ace retaliated with a similar attack. Firing a beam the same color as his shinning white aura, the two attacks collided and with it a powerful force that pushed us all away from the two combatants. At first they seemed equally strong until Ace began inching his way toward Verion. At that moment, the point where the two beams were pushing against each other also inched toward Verion, constantly staying in the center of the two.

Verion's eyes widened at the display of power from the small earth kitten and began thinking to himself, "No, this can't be happening. I was the ultimate sage. Even Merion struggled against my incredible powers but this little whelp is over powering me like I'm but a feather he can simply blow on to keep in the air. Is this truly the power of the spell of wishes?" When Ace was but mere yards from the Zouriinkusu's mouth, he poured even more power into his attack, completely pushing it back into the beast's mouth. Verion now was choking on Ace's powerful attack and soon began to glow and shrink in size.

As the glow from Verion's body faded, he shrank into what seemed to look similar to a 70 year old man. He still had a slight build but he had a long beard that extended past his knees. His brown-ish red eyes showed a sign of complete shock. "What? What happened to me?" He demanded. When ace spoke, it now sounded like an entire chorus of him was singing in unison. "I've taken away your ability to use spells. You will never use magic to hurt innocent creatures ever again." He said. Then a shock wave of energy erupted from his body that spread across the entire planet and any Valkyrian that it had washed over was instantly transformed to like a cross between their old Valkyrian form and one of the Warners. In other words, every Valkyrian across the globe transformed to look similar to Queen Angelina. Moments later, another shockwave erupted from his body and washed over the planet, giving every dead Valkyrian new life. The planet was revived.

Watching Ace as brilliant as he was, I was proud of him and tears began to well up and fall from my eyes. He slowly floated down to the ground and as he did he was enveloped in a pure white light. That light proceeded to split into two lights and then they both faded and shaped themselves, one into a small kitten, and one into a tall Valkyrian. When the light finally faded, Ace took a step forward and stumbled a little bit. "What exactly did you do?" I asked him. "Guys, say 'hi' to Vuloc." Ace said as the rest of the group gathered around. When Queen Angelina came into view they both met each other's eyes and howled, "Hellooooo Nurse!" They're a perfect match for each other." Yakko stated sarcastically. The two bashfully turned away from each other and blushed.

"Gaaaaaaah!" Verion Screamed at the top of his lungs. "Why? With all my power. Why?" "Vuloc looked at Ace and then turned his gaze back to Verion and said sarcastically, "You weren't born from a wishing star." "Speaking of which, you promised." Ace said to Vuloc. The Valkyrian simply nodded, closed his eyes and a small shock wave came from his body. "There, it is done." He finally said. "What did you do?" Verion said with horror and fear in his voice and eyes. "I've dispersed the power of the spell of wishes amongst the entire planet." Vuloc said. So now, everyone has the spell of wishes?" Dot asked. "Yes, young one, like you and you siblings and friends, every Valkyrian now has the ability to wish and dream." Vuloc told her. Dot simply stood there confused. "Every being has the ability to wish and dream. Valkyrians on the other hand, were born from a burst of energy and never really givin the ability to wish or dream. The spell of wishes grants all Valkyrians the ability to do both." He continued. "But, Verion had a wish and it never came true." Dot reminded him. Vuloc had an answer for that as well. "Verion was the first sage. Sages are granted more power because of the ability to dream. Verion had a dream that became an ambition, not a wish that became a reality." Verion was beginning to become enraged at this point and rushed in to try to beat the tar out of Vuloc. However, he never made it to Vuloc. Nymph used her power to tie Verion up with vines and detain him. Angela walked up to Verion and punched him in the face after saying, "I'm **not** stupid!"


	19. Final Chapter  Beginning and End

**Final Chapter**** – Beginning and End**

"I still don't understand," I said to Vuloc confused, "We were told that Valkyrians were born from the collection of mass amounts of energy, enough to birth a new consciousness." "Yes, that is true." Vuloc said to me. "Well then how **did **you and Ace acquire the spell of wishes anyway?" I asked. Vuloc simply smiled at me and said, "To be honest, it was never me. I only assisted him to fight. The moment he achieved that massive amount of power, was the point in which I fell exhausted. The rest was just his will to protect his family. The spell of wishes is the ability to wish and make that wish into reality, like the way the humans on your world work hard to achieve their dreams. What you saw was merely Ace surpassing the sage mode into something greater. I've already dubbed it 'sage mode overburst'." With that cleared up, I still had one more question for the Valkyrian sage, "What exactly did Ace do when he separated himself from you?" Vuloc looked at me like I was crazy for a moment and then burst out into joyous laughter. He settled down after a short while and whipped a tear from his right eye. He took a deep breath and said, "Ace, is now simply a normal earth-cat, just like you. He gave up his magical powers and gave them all to me. And I divided such power amongst the entire planet."

They asked for our assistance to attempt to bring the entire planet together for a celebration. It took us a couple days, but we accomplished the task and I got to know the woman in the purple dress. Her name was Lina and she was very kind. The new king and queen of the planet Valkyria announced us as the heroes of their world and the celebration had begun. There were a few questions as to what their new shape was all about. (I never had a decent answer for that.) The celebration lasted for an entire week, and during that time the Warners got plenty of chances to play their silly pranks and gags. Not many people were much annoyed as they were amused and happy. It was entirely bliss and even Queen Angelina finally got the hang of using her magic properly. I learned that just because you can't see something, doesn't mean it's not there. However, something was nagging at the back of my mind, something I forgot.

That night I fell asleep and dreamed of a far off world. A world that was covered in human cities, complete with buildings and streets with cars and trucks driving down them. In one particular city called Burbank, California, A quaint white house sat amongst many others. And yet it looked lonely, like it had lost its friend. On the porch there was a familiar woman sitting in a patio chair and staring up at the sky, sad and alone. Certain memories began to return to me. Now that it was all over, we needed to go back to where we belonged...home. However, the Warners had made many new friends during the celebration and even went out on a few short dates with some of the ex-guardians. (Yakko especially liked going out with Angela.) How was I going to ask them to leave this paradise and go back to a world of ridicule and contempt?

Perhaps, I wouldn't...If they were happy here on Valkyria, then who am I to take that away? I opened my eyes and brought my head up to look around the area. I was curled up in one of the beds in the Silver Palace, sharing it with Dot, who was still fast asleep rolled up in the blankets like a burrito and possibly dreaming of some of the men she had dated in the past week. I turned my head to look out the window at the full moon. Its bright light brought to the forefront of my mind the fact that these past few months have seemed like a couple of years had gone by, and I wondered what was happening on earth. What was Mira doing? Without the Warners, did she even have a **job**? What's going to happen when we do get back to Earth?

Rather than think about it, I made a final decision to hop down off of the bed, and made my way to find Runt and Ace. I located them both in Yakko's room where they were sleeping comfortably. Silently, I crept over to Runt and gently shook him awake. "Hmm? What is it Rita?" he asked. I simply placed the first finger of my left paw over my lips and shushed him. Motioning for him to follow me, I made my way over to Ace, leapt up onto the pillow-like bed and shook him awake. "Mom?" he groaned as he slowly opened his eyes. "What's wrong?" he then asked waking up more completely. I shushed, him and whispered, "Come with me", so as to not wake the sleeping Warner. We jumped down off of the bed and quietly made our way to the main chamber, where Queen Angelina and King Vuloc were sleeping. It had only been a week, but they were wed and doing everything they could to bring a justified monarchy back to the people. I scratched my paws along the corner of the door to cause some noise, hoping that they were light sleepers. Apparently, only Queen Angelina was. She slowly opened the door groggy and still half asleep and wearing a light blue silk night gown with light gold lining. Over that she had put on a silver colored silk robe. Her hair was slightly tussled, but somehow maintained its overall shape. She yawned deeply and said, "Couldn't it wait till morning?" noticing that no one was eye level with her, she looked downward and finally noticed us. She knelt down and began speaking to us. "This had better be good." She said crankily and annoyed.

"I'm sorry to bother you so late, your highness." I said, "But I was wondering if you could send us home." Knowing that if **she **gave it a try herself, she might end up sending us to a random hostile planet, she closed her eyes and gave it a thought. As she did this, Ace turned to me and asked, "How come Uncle Yakko, Uncle Wakko and Aunt Dot aren't with us?" "The Warners seem to be happy here. I can't take something like that away from them. It would be better if they stayed on Valkyria." Suddenly, Yakko's voice could be heard from behind me. "Aren't **we** supposed to be the judges of that?" He said sarcastically. We all turned around and I gasped in slight shame, realizing that they were there the whole time. "Another cliché, but I like the outcome of this particular one." Dot added to Yakko's comment. "This place is nice, but we're homesick." Wakko said and made his silly googy face. I couldn't help but chuckle at that. "It looks like you all made your decision. Come back in the morning and I'll have Vuloc open a portal back to Earth. If I do it I might put you in the **center **of the planet." She said. Thinking about it, the Warners all cringed together. And we all journeyed back to our rooms.

Morning arose and we all sat up in our beds, stretched and got ourselves packed to return home. When we arrived at the dining room for breakfast, we noticed all of the guardians sitting there with the king and queen. "What gives?" Yakko asked. Angela shot up out of her seat and ran over to Yakko crying out loud. She snatched him up to give him a big hug in between her breasts. Once again, he melted into a puddle of black goo. Angela knelt down, wiping the tears from her eyes and asked the out-of-shape Warner, "Do you really have to go?" Yakko regained his shape and gently grasped Angela's hands. "Yah, I do. Uuuhhhh, it's oh kay though. The king and I set up a mail system from Valkyria to Earth." Yakko said. The king interrupted and said, "Actually, she has insisted on going back with you." "But, what about your family and friends here?" Yakko asked her slightly concerned. "Oh, they died ages ago." Angela answered giddy and happy. "I think it is an excellent idea." Vuloc stated above the murmurs of the dining hall. We all turned our attention to the new king surprised and listened to what he needed to say. "This would give us an opportunity to make direct contact with another planet. Angela, I'm appointing you an official representative of the Valkyrian race and sending you to the planet Earth with these brave heroes. Angela's smile stretched from ear to ear as she realized that she would be going to her new boyfriend's home planet and living there with him. She was so happy that she snatched Yakko once again and quickly kissed him full on the lips before he could melt again. Rather than melting, his body began to turn beat red from the blush and steam erupted from the sides of his head, making the sound of a train whistle. When she pulled away, he was caught in a daydream and swaying back and forth in pure bliss. He snapped back to reality and smiled at Angela. "Do you approve?" Vuloc asked Yakko coyly. Yakko turned his gaze at the king and shouted, "OH, YAH!" This got everyone in the room to burst out laughing.

Back on Earth, Mira was inside Thaddeus Plotz's office engaged in an argument with him on whether or not the Warners were returning. Apparently Plotz wanted to tear down the water tower and put up a dinner for tourists in its place. "You can't do this, there are regulations. You have to keep the water tower. It's the Warners' home." Mira snapped at Mr. Plotz. "I'm the CEO. I can do what I want. The Warners are gone for good and I actually hope they stay wherever they are. Besides, a dinner would increase the income and bring in more money! We're tearing down the water tower."

"Is that your final answer T.P?" Yakko's voice asked as they entered into Plotz's office through a new portal near the doorway. Yakko was the first to pass through the portal, then Dot and Wakko, then Runt with Ace and I on his back, and lastly Angela passed through the portal. She looked around the room and said, "So this is the planet Earth. It's a lot smaller than I imagined." "This is just Plotzie's office. Earth is out there." Yakko said pointing his right thumb at the glass window that gives Plotz his view of the entire movie lot. Angela ran to the window and pressed her hands against it and simply watched as all of the people moved on by with all of the movie props and cameras. She was so intrigued that she didn't notice Plotz watching her in fear. "Heavens, they're multiplying!" He said under his breath. "Oh yah, there's a whole planet of them behind this hole."Yakko said standing near the portal as it began to slowly shrink in size. "Then maybe you should just stay there, nobody wants you here!" Plotz sternly said, trying to scare the Warners into going back through. Rather than taking Plotz's words to heart and becoming upset, Yakko simply said to the CEO, "And that's exactly why we're staying!" When he said that, the portal vanished from sight. Devastated, Plotz dropped his head onto his desk and cried, "Nooooohohoho!"

"Well, looks like I win another debate Mr. Plotz. And this time, I didn't need to get any lawyers to help out." Mira boasted. Plotz simply sat there crying at his desk. "By the way, who is your friend?" Mira asked. Yakko walked over, got Angela's attention and brought her back over to introduce her to Mira. "This is Angela, my girlfriend, and the official representative of the planet of Valkyria." Angela reached up and shook Mira's hand. "Yakko has told me about you. You take care of them am I right?" "Yes, I do, but..." She turned to Yakko, "I thought all of the Valkyrians were killed by Coluv?" Mira asked. "Long story." Yakko said to her with slight frustration. "You can tell me the story on our way back to my house. You all have a report to give me from your little 'field trip'." The Warners simply stared at Mira with pouty faces. "You are actually going to hold us to the homework thing?" Dot whined. "You have been gone for over a month. YES!" Mira sternly stated. "Awe!" they all complained in unison.

**THE END**


End file.
